Brick burning

Beside the use of wood for timber it is used as an energy resource i.e. for brick burning. To fight deforestation in the area around Kihurio in 2006 SMECAO started to develop a new environmentally-friendly method together with the local brickburners in which rice husks are used instead of wood. Rice husks are a waste product in the rice production and have no further use. The method was even improved out of own initiative by the brickburners themselves.

In Kihurio wad with this new method 34 kilns each of 3000 bricks were produced from August 2010 to October 2011 saving up to 70 tons of wood.