Corporate Social Responsibility
For every 2 homes we insulate, we donate an eco-stove on your behalf to a woman-headed household in Uganda at no additional cost to you and plant enough trees to eliminate the remainder of your home’s GHG output after insulation.
We are blessed as Canadians to live in a country as great as ours. Recent funding from the government of Canada to help us lower our carbon emissions is making it easier for many Canadians from sea to sea to make home improvements to lower our carbon emissions. Not so fortunate for some nations around the world.
Canada is one of the most generous nations on earth and as we continue with this virtue, this time around, it is all the more critical because halting and hopefully reversing global warming and its devastating effects, will take all of us as members of the human family globally pulling together; because earth is our shared home.
Most global carbon emissions are from the Global North yet the effects of global warming due to carbon emissions will have a far more devastating impact on the Global South unless we act and act fast.
Women-headed households in Uganda are resilient; yet they are often some of the poorest. For many the simple act of cooking a meal can be a long and arduous task. Many cook using wood or for those with slightly better means, charcoal is the fuel of choice.
According to the World Health Organization, over 3 million deaths worldwide happen prematurely due to indoor air pollution largely as a result of burning solid biomass like wood and charcoal for cooking. More than 50% of premature deaths due to pneumonia among children under 5 are caused by the particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution.
We traveled to Uganda and teamed up with ecostoves.org. We decided to donate an eco stove for every 2 homes whose attic we insulate; we donate an eco stove on your behalf to a woman-headed household. As well we plant enough trees to eliminate the remainder of your GHG emissions after attic insulation.
Like this, every time that family in Uganda lights up that stove, they will remember to pray for you in gratitude; because your choice to choose us over other options to insulate your attic, made it possible for them to acquire this life-changing household item.
This is a $330 value at no additional cost to you.
Above all else, here is what these extra-national green initiatives (the eco-stove and the trees) do for you and for the family in Uganda (some benefits may overlap depending on how you look at it – which is further testament to how interconnected we all are).
For you
Thanks to current government funding in the fight against global warming, we arrange on your behalf for a Registered Energy Advisor (REA) to assess the energy efficiency of your home before we insulate your attic and the REA provides you with a report that tells you the amount of your home’s greenhouse gas output. The report is a prerequisite for most government funding for efforts against climate change.
You will receive EnerGuide certificates from your Registered Energy Advisor, as part of your report, before and after your attic insulation upgrade that looks like the snippet of the certificate here.
Before Attic Insulation
After Attic Insulation
As shown in the snippet of the certificate here, often, despite the improvement, you are still putting out some greenhouse gases.
However, due to the eco-stove and the trees you donated in Uganda, we provide you with a certificate of appreciation that reports on your net zero achievement for your home and your contributions in the fight against global warming and human development.
This is how we reach net-zero emissions in Canada by 2050.
For the Family in Uganda
Health
Thanks to you, the beneficiary household in Uganda will be free from indoor pollution; healthier, and living more productive lives.
We all win when we look out for each other.
Money Savings
Money saved is money gained.
Study after study shows that when women have control over a family’s savings, money usually goes towards family targets like food, children’s needs, and education. And this feature is not just peculiar to developing economies.
Sociologist Catherine Kenney reports that in low to moderate-income two-parent U.S households, children are less likely to experience food insecurity when the family’s pooled income is controlled by mothers.
This is why we chose on your behalf to bless women-headed households in Uganda. Serendipitously, ecostoves.org is a woman-found and woman-led business that employs many underprivileged women. This for us was all the more reason we chose to team up with them.
To understand how we arrived at the numbers below, please see our Manifesto and Methodology.
Environmental Conservation
A family of 5 on average uses 10 sacks of charcoal a year.
To produce a sack of charcoal on average 300 kg of trees are downed and burnt (therefore a family of 5 uses up 3000 kg of trees in charcoal a year).
Because of your generous donation of the eco-stove, a family of 5 will be prevented from releasing 2.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the environment.
Each of our trees removes on average 0.109 tonnes of GHG emissions from the environment annually. We plant enough trees on your behalf, no matter how many is needed, to remove the remainder of your carbon dioxide emissions annually. For example, if the remainder of your annual GHG emissions is 7.7 tonnes, we will plant 71 trees.
This is all made possible because of your attic insulation conscious buying decision.
Special note:
Hardly does any owner of the eco-stove go back to the old cooking fuels as the eco-stove is far more convenient and way cheaper to run.
Unless otherwise mentioned, dollar amounts are in Canadian dollars and shillings (/=) are in Ugandan shillings.