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Tea factories must shift from wood fuel now

 

During his recent tour of selected tea factories in Nyeri County, Iran’s Ambassador to Kenya, Jafar Barmaki, urged tea processing factories to desist from using wood fuel-powered boilers and instead consider adopting green alternatives.

For a substantive period, many Kenyan tea firms have been using such boilers to dry green leaves and wither the same.

In Kenya, tea is mainly grown in the highlands, on relatively fertile grounds where forests, whether natural or individually owned, are closely found. What that means, in essence, is that the high energy-consuming plants put the forests at risk of destruction or even distinction.

Every one of the many factories consume wood worth an estimated Sh3 million or more yearly. If they were to switch to, say, gas, the cost would be the same or even lower. But this is only at the face value.

If one were to critically look into other costs—like the implication of cutting a tree on the ecosystem’s stability; deleterious influence on the struggle to liberate the world from the reeling effects of climate change; and the number of years it takes to nurture a tree—they wouldn’t consume an extra piece of wood.

We may never be able to quantify the true value of a tree to the environment. Kenya has been struggling to restore its forest cover from a scary three per cent a decade ago to a relatively impressive eight per cent this year.

It has taken sacrifices and investment to achieve this development. We can’t afford to lose such headways, looking at the magnitude of drought, famine and flood catastrophes in our country.

In the tea processing industry, the thermal energy used for withering and drying of leaves accounts for more than 80 per cent of the energy consumed. It, therefore, calls for delicate and well-structured decisions when choosing the kind of energy that is used to run air heaters, steam boilers and hot water generators.

As Franklin Roosevelt said, “forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to the people”. Preserve them.   BY DAILY NATION   

 

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