Do you know a communal cooker is turning rubbish into fuel to feed residents of one of Africa’s biggest slums — Kibera — on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya? Afrigadget the full gist on the communal stove and oven.

The garbage-burning oven communal oven is a pilot project designed to clean up Kenya’s slums while preserving the country’s dwindling forests, which are cleared to provide wood and charcoal for cooking. If successful, the UN-sponsored pilot project could be a model as the world faces an explosion in urban living, and the waste it creates.

The cooker has one oven and seven hot plates that slum residents can use for cooking. In exchange, residents will pay about 15 US cents to the cooker’s operators to collect their garbage and channel it into their ovens. People are also being encouraged to bring in garbage on their own. Once collected, the waste is laid out on nearby racks to dry before it can be used as fuel. John Githinji is one of the workers who looks after cooker. “After collecting the garbage, we put the wet plastic bags over there on the racks so that they can dry. After they dry, they are put through the opening at the top of the structure and they come down to here where the fire is lit and it burns the waste,” said Githinji.

While the community cooker has really helped clean up the Kibera slum, isn’t the smoke and pollution caused by the burning materials far outstrip its benefits?

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