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Envirofit Combines Business and Benefit By Elissa J. Tivona
Warm weather signals the return of backyard barbecues – a summer highlight for Ron Bills, CEO and chairman of the board of nonprofit Envirofit in Fort Collins. If you snag an invitation, you might catch a glimpse of Bills grilling burgers on the G-3300, one of the premiere Clean Cookstoves manufactured and marketed by Envirofit.
Though rare in Fort Collins, G-3300s and other similar models in Envirofit’s growing line of Clean Cookstoves, are used daily in over 500,000 homes in some of the most remote regions of India, Africa and South and Central America. The net result for families that use them: the reduction of 65 percent of carbon dioxide, 80 percent of smoke and toxic emissions, and 40 percent of black carbon. Ron Bills couldn’t be prouder of this record. Established as a social enterprise in 2003, Envirofit was founded on a simple premise, “to develop well-engineered technology solutions to improve the human condition on a global scale, with a primary emphasis on applications in the developing world.” The company’s philosophy emphasizes social benefit as a key component of their business model: “No family should have to suffer from the devastating effects of indoor air pollution. Envirofit is committed to producing high quality, rigorously tested, clean energy products. We believe everyone deserves access to products, which are durable, affordable and desirable.” This ambitious vision was originally born at Colorado State University’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory (EECL). Bryan Wilson, founder of EECL and a mechanical engineering professor at CSU, started cook stove research and testing at the university to address the acute global crisis of indoor air pollution (IAP). “According to the World Health Organization, over 3.5 billion people – about half of the world's population – cook their daily meals indoors over cooking fires fueled by biomass (wood, charcoal or animal dung). The resulting indoor
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Top: Envirofit’s Executive Team: Randall Monson, Vice-President of Finance & Chief Financial Officer; Nathan Lorenz, Vice-President of Engineering, Director & Envirofit Co-Founder; Ron Bills, CEO and Chairman of the Board; Tim Bauer, Vice-President of Operations, Director & Envirofit Co-Founder Bottom: An Envirofit Clean Cookstove in use; it can reduce 65 percent of carbon dioxide, 80 percent of smoke and toxic emissions, and 40 percent of black carbon.
air pollution kills 2 million people every year... More than 85 percent of these deaths are women and children under the age of five,” points out Mac McGoldrick, Operations Manager at EECL. With access to an exceptional mix of talent and academic resources, EECL was well suited to tackle a crisis of this magnitude. A team of scientists, engineers and students at CSU and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory set to work redesigning the cook stove’s combustion chamber using a proprietary alloy which vastly improved the stove’s efficiency and reduced toxic emissions. However, the challenge of marketing the scientifically proven solution appeared even more daunting than the initial product development. To achieve any appreciable decline in indoor air pollution, hundreds of millions of primitive stoves on every continent had to be replaced, a tall order for any business. For the visionary group of social entrepreneurs like Wilson and his founding partners, Paul Hudnut, Tim Bauer and Nathan Lorenz at Envirofit, it looked like an opportunity. Enter Ron Bills, former CEO of Segway and experienced manager of worldwide business operations for multiple corporations. Bills joined Envirofit as CEO and Chairman of the Board in January of 2004 and helped the company identify partners to bring an enterprise-based commercial approach to the manufacture and distribution of the stoves. “In 2007, the EECL and Envirofit International partnered with the Shell Foundation and together we agreed that the IAP problem had to be solved through market-thinking and private sector involvement,” reports McGoldrick.
As a result, Envirofit champions a business model that reaches people at the base of the economic pyramid, not only as product consumers but also as business partners in product distribution. Bills points to the company’s program in India as an example of how the model works. “Envirofit’s program in India brings women to the center of the cook stove distribution table. [We] work with multiple women’s organizations including Fullerton India, Friend’s of Women’s World Banking and the Integrated Village Development Project (IVDP) with a network of more than 180,000 women. To date IVDP… has distributed around 10,000 Envirofit cook stoves to its members and is planning for a much bigger program in 2013.” Grassroots outreach through networks of business partners like those in India show real promise for significant reduction of indoor air pollution. According to Envirofit calculations, the impact to-date of converting 500,000 households to the clean technology cook stoves has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by over 6.25 million tons, allowed 2.5 million people to breathe easier and saved almost 16.5 million trees. Ron Bills and colleagues at Envirofit and the EECL are optimistic that numbers like these will inspire other entrepreneurs to follow in their footsteps, rising to serious global challenges with creativity and innovation. Elissa J. Tivona is a writer and international educator living in Fort Collins. Find her online at www.thepeacecorrespondent.com. Lydia’s STYLE Magazine