Green Newton

Newton’s Sister City Project with San Juan del Sur Nicaragua is now 35 years old, but we’re still going gangbusters and aim to be greener and greener every year. In our ECOSTOVE program (building efficient woodburning stoves with chimneys) we have weaned ourselves entirely from the use of Portland Cement (the manufacture of which causes as much as 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions). We used to use 80 lbs. of cement per stove, but now that we’re woke about Climate Change, we use a green alternative mortar made of crushed cascajo (ancient layers of dried mud-flow), some really dried out horse manure, and some cal (hydrated lime produced locally because it’s used to clarify cane-sugar juice). Click here  to see our colleague Reyna Zeas mixing a big batch of our Green Mortar using her feet! Click here to see how the Green Mortar is used to build up the body of the stove and create custom-sized burners depending on the cook’s favorite pots. As for the “fire box” where the burning wood focuses its heat on the pots of rice and beans, we have exchanged one green product for another. We used to build the interior of the stove with Compressed Earth Blocks made in our old yellow press, but this is labor-intensive and time-consuming, so we have switched to using sections of Piedra Cantera (volcanic quarry stone cut out of an open quarry an hour north of San Juan del Sur). Piedra Cantera looks like cement but, in fact, it’s what the Romans call tufa. Our participating housewives have learned how to cut the blocks of stone with carbide-tipped disks. Note how the lengthwise sections make a frame for the steel rebar that will support the heavy pots. This breakthrough has quickened the pace of our EcoStove campaign. Already in the first four months of 2024 we’ve installed 21 stoves in a community called El Oro. Every completed stove-with-chimney means another family that doesn’t have to breathe life-shortening smoke all day.

David Gullette is a volunteer with the Newton-San Juan del Sur Sister City Project.