Firewood, Still A Viable Alternative to Gas

Certain villages in India are used to using natural gas in their daily cooking. The gas shortages, occurring across the countryside, however, is forcing many villagers to find alternative means of cooking their foods. The main alternative fuel seems to be wood from the nearby forests.

No where is this more true than in the rural country of Himachal Pradesh. As more and more villagers make use of firewood from the forests, however, the deforestation is putting stress on the surrounding environment in ways that threaten the viability of the ecosphere.

The conventional way that gas reaches the villagers is through what are called LPG cylinders. LPG is short for liquefied petroleum gas. A problem with these cylinders is that they don’t exactly have a stellar safety record. That’s because LPG, if stored incorrectly, is a fire and explosion hazard. In fact, most of the fires in the country are caused either directly or indirectly by improperly stored or unsafe LPG cylinders.

Due to it’s built-in risks, the government of India has improved its monitoring and quality control measures to help improve the end product shipped in these canisters. While this is obviously a good thing, the attention to quality control has inadvertently exacerbated problem by decreasing the amount of gas that can be delivered to the villagers in time.

However, if the LPG cylinders fail to reach the villagers in an acceptable amount of time, they have no other choice than to take what they need from the nearby forest.

Many possible solutions have been proposed. One of the more popular ones is to limit the amount of gas that a household can receive in a certain period of time.

Whatever the solution, the hope is that it comes soon, before the forest areas have been devastated beyond repair.

This article was written by M. Trainor at commercial stainless steel sinks. You can read all about cast iron cookware and stainless steel bar sink at his website.