SOCIAL OPPORTUNITY
The rocket stove aims to address multiple issues across health, quality of life and environmental sustainability.
Environmental Sustainability – Deforestation is an issue across the globe and residential use of wood for cooking is a large contributor to the cutting down of trees in developing countries. Removal of trees reduces the Earth’s capacity to process the carbon dioxide released from human activity. Additionally, this “stored” carbon is then released when combusted. Carbon dioxide, methane and carbon monoxide is released in the burning of wood – when inefficient combustion occurs, black carbon is emitted. Black carbon is one of the top contributors to global warming.
Health – Respiratory issues associated with cooking are estimated to result in over 4.3 million deaths per year. Current methods of burning fuels for cooking are inefficient, cause a lot of smoke and production of harmful gases.
Quality of life – The smoke from inefficient combustion also results in significant discomfort during cooking, causing itchy eyes, coughing and carbon (soot) on the walls and roof.
SOCIAL OPPORTUNITY
Sustainable Development Goal Targeted: Sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production
Waste Management Consulting aims to address several issues in emerging economies:
Health effects- lack of reliable government waste disposal results in harmful, toxic air due to the burning of rubbish. This negatively affects the living conditions of people residing in high density urban areas, the cities which house the majority of the population. Families and young children are particularly susceptible to the negative health impacts of frequent burning rubbish.
Environmental degradation- waste disposal that does exist in developing countries mostly results in landfill without any consideration of alternate methods. Within developing countries like Timor-Leste there is no concept of recycling let alone operational practice. At this stage there is no sustainable way to repurpose materials in Timor-Leste as an example.
Social degradation- ineffective waste management creates an eyesore in cities, reduces the attractiveness of the locale for tourists/foreign investment and sucks productive time in removal or processing. Beachside and streetside restaurants and hotels suffer from loss of customers due to the litter and burning outside. Workers in industries dependent on the environment, like scuba instructors depend on marine systems, suffer as their place of work deteriorates over time.
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SOCIAL OPPORTUNITY
Sustainable Development Goal Targeted: Decent work and economic growth
Social Consulting aims to address several issues in emerging economies:
Economic empowerment- small scale entrepreneurship in developing economies can be hampered by lack of access to capital, appropriate advice and a supportive ecosystem.
Limited education opportunities- fundamental business education and financial education for entrepreneurs and consumers can improve economic outcomes. By simply understanding the difference between ‘good debt’ and ‘bad debt’, consumers can be guided to purchase assets, which will help increase their wealth while reducing repayment risk.
Loan costs - microfinance institutions charge 40+% interest on their loans, which limit the potential social impact that these loans can have. The reason for this is that many institutions have high overhead costs such as the employment of loan officers who are commonly deployed to assess applicants’ risks, which is timely and costly in a developing world context.
Compounding debt- with limited education opportunities and cultural factors at play microfinance can create greater problems by compounding debt problems. For example, a borrower may engage secondary or tertiary loans to pay back an original debt at far worse terms or interest rates. Compounding the problem.
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