Reducing Aid Trash: Conducting R&D Testing in Context
- David Baulis
- Jul 17
- 3 min read
On July 31st, we are travelling to East Africa for a 6-week research and development intensive. 6 weeks, 5 locations, 50 chimneys manufactured, installed and tested using equipment supplied by Air-Met Scientific.
Now, we already know that our chimney design effectively extracts smoke, and since there are laboratories that provide a certified testing service, why do we feel it is necessary to conduct these tests in situ?
I’m so glad you asked.
As there are no official records kept of the amount of waste generated by the development sector, it is impossible to provide you with a handy statistic here. But from plastic packaging to inappropriate, damaged, flawed or poorly maintained products, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the good intentions of the helpful industry leave a significant trash burden on local communities, many of which have no formal waste management system, other than a hole in the ground, and that was a community in Australia.
Aid trash is evidence of the oft-quoted phrase: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley [go often astray].” (R. Burns)
Increasingly, however, one has to question how well laid these schemes are. If we focus on initiatives that have been implemented to reduce indoor air pollution alone, we find that “studies that report on adoption success use descriptions [such] as ‘largely discouraging’, ‘a mere 10%’, ‘only 4%’, ‘rare’, and ‘very low’.” (Brakema, E. A., et. al., 2020) Worse, these findings are not new:
“Although these observations and analyses of implementation factors were already described in the eighties and nineties, implementation strategies and adoption rates generally appear not to have changed accordingly.”
(Brakema, E. A., et. al., 2020)
At Baulis & Sons Design, we are committed to increasing the long term sustainability and adaptability of our products. Ensuring that the life cycle of our chimneys, from manufacturing to disposal, maximises health benefits and minimises the burden of waste. So, how do we avoid repeating the mistakes of those who came before us? Why do these projects “gang aft agley?” Given the almost 50 years of failed cooking-related interventions, there is a relatively robust body of data to help us understand what keeps going wrong. Multiple research projects have returned the same result:
“The underlying flaw of many cooking interventions is a systemic lack of attention to users’ rank ordering of product features and contexts of use during the product design process.”
(Abdelnour, S. Pemberton-Pigott, C & Deichmann, D, 2020)
Further:
“Most cooking-related studies are tech-centric, with a narrow focus on efficiency and performance testing in a controlled laboratory setting. Comparatively, there are few randomized, controlled investigations that examine the adoption of these technologies in the field and those that exist are ‘scarce, scattered, and of differential quality.’”
(Lindgren, S. A. 2020)
The point at which design meets user is the fulcrum upon which these interventions stand or fall.
We believe investing time and resources at this crucial junction mitigates the reputational damage and trash burden of a culturally inconsonant or ineffective product.
A lab test can tell us how the chimney performs under ideal conditions. But only by installing the chimney in the homes of our intended end-users and watching how they utilise the chimney in practice can we gain a proper understanding of the influence of fuel choice, home design and cooking habits on the overall efficacy and suitability of these units.
We are particularly excited to be using the Air-Met DustCanary units to test the real-time impact of the chimney on the air that women will be breathing—how their posture (e.g. leaning in to stir) and their methods (e.g. moving the pot on and off the heat) will influence the efficacy of our design. A perfectly sound chimney design in the lab may prove entirely ineffective if the owner doesn’t build the fire or place their cooking materials where the designer intended.
We recognise that pursuing this course of research is time-consuming and expensive. We also know that we are opening our design to criticism from both our intended end-users and third-party specialists who will analyse the results of our testing devices.
However, two things—this project has and always will take a team to accomplish it’s end goal, and to that end we welcome the critique the testing provides and secondly, we really value people. Let’s ensure what we create is the best we can.
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