About EcoZoom

EcoZoom is a for-profit, certified B Corp that makes clean cookstoves accessible and affordable in developing countries. We work to empower local workforces, economies and women while creating financially sustainable markets. We continuously improve upon our product offering and the customer value we deliver by being connected to all parts of the value chain. We do this by:

• Providing highly efficient, durable cookstoves with a commercial finish that can be manufactured on a massive scale.
• Designing appropriate, affordable products for the market by incorporating direct end user feedback and purchasing data.
• Building distribution partners’ knowledge and financial capacity by sharing experience and resources.
• Bridging the gap between artisanal suppliers and offshore manufacturing by creating a scalable local stove manufacturing solution.
• Taking action to create and utilize logistics, reporting and monitoring systems for our customers, our stakeholders and us.

We believe that people of any economic status should have access to beautifully designed cooking products that will improve their health, income, and environment.

Our Partners

EcoZoom has the exclusive rights to internationally distribute the stove designed by the Aprovecho Research Center; a leading nonprofit organization in the design, engineering and testing of improved cookstoves. Aprovecho Research Center consultants have been designing and implementing improved biomass cooking and heating technologies in more than 60 countries worldwide for the past 29 years. In 2009, the Aprovecho Research Center was awarded the Ashden International Energy Champion Award for its groundbreaking achievements in creating affordable and reliable mass-produced improved cook stoves. The award was presented to Aprovecho by Prince Charles. EcoZoom and Aprovecho Research Center are happy to move forward and get Aprovecho technology out of the lab and into the hands of cooks.

Dean Still, Executive Director of ARC, Lann Leslie, ARC Board of Directors, and Ben West, CEO of EcoZoom, sign a contract to give EcoZoom exclusive rights to sell ARC products around the globe.

The Team

Chief Executive Officer – Benjamin West
ben@ecozoomstove.com
Professional Summary: After earning his MBA from the University of Oregon, Ben managed the turnaround of StoveTec. Ben overhauled the staff, relaunched the company’s website, and implemented accounting practices. Dramatic sales growth and sound business practices pushed the company to breakeven in the first quarter of 2010 after a significant loss in 2009. Ben developed StoveTec’s strategies and business models, while installing the financial processes and controls needed to succeed. Obtaining exclusive rights to developing countries markets from the Aprovecho Research Center in April of 2011, Ben started EcoZoom to continue what he started at StoveTec, the mass distribution of improved cookstoves around the world.

 

Director of Developed Countries – Tom Pritchard
tom@ecozoomstove.com
Professional Summary: After earning his MBA from the University of Oregon, Tom worked for an online retailer in the Outdoor industry managing vendor marketing and sales relationships for more than 100 brands sold on the website. Most recently he worked as an Account Manager for a digital marketing agency and also has experience in project management, sales, and brand marketing.

Board of Advisers

Dave Williams
Dave’s had positions all over the world-ranging from high-school physics teacher to chief engineer to CEO for a variety of companies, including a Taiwanese boat builder, a robotics company, and an oil and gas company. He was CEO of ShoreBank Pacific where he led the bank – focused on a triple-bottom-line approach to business – to profitability, growing the bank’s assets from $10 million in 2000 to $155 million in 2006, and its loans grew from $2 million to $166 million in the same time frame.

Bill Collins

Bill is a former Senior Executive at EcoSecurities. He is a finance professional with 25 years of experience in investment banking, structured finance, derivatives and environmental markets. During his time at EcoSecurities, the company grew to be the foremost aggregator in the international carbon markets, publicly listed its stock, and initiated principal transacting activities in compliance, voluntary and forestry markets around the world.

 

Nicola Armacost

Niki is the Managing Director and Co-founder of ARC Finance. She brings over 17 years’ experience in microfinance throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Prior to founding Arc Finance in 2008, she served as the Director of Linkages and Learning at Women’s World Banking.

 

Jeff Keenan

Jeff spent 20+ years at Adobe Systems performing numerous management roles within the Global Supply Chain. During his time at Adobe, Jeff spent 2 years in Singapore, setting up Adobe’s supply chain operations for the entire Asia-Pacific region. Subsequently, Jeff managed supplier start-ups in the Czech Republic, Russia, and Germany. Jeff also oversaw the global New Product Release Key Milestones for the launches of Creative Suites 3, 4 and 5, comprised of 17 product lines in 22 languages shipping in over 40 countries, and he drove Adobe’s adoption of the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition code of conduct (eicc.info) as Adobe’s Supply Chain Social Responsibility framework. Outside of Adobe, Jeff’s passion for helping people in extreme poverty has led him to extensive volunteer involvement, most recently as co-chair of the successful 2011 conference “Bottom Billions / Bottom Line : The Role of Business in Ending Global Poverty” (spu.edu/bottombillions). Jeff also is co-author of the book Our Day to End Poverty: 24 ways you can make a difference (2007, Berrett-Koehler Publishing).

Preston Thompson
Preston spent over 20 years with The Boeing Company where he held senior leadership positions in Supplier Management, Quality Assurance, Production Operations, Business Operations and Research & Development. Upon leaving Boeing, Preston helped form Ayni Education International in Afghanistan to create quality educational experiences that empower and inspire children and their families to build peaceful, just and life affirming communities. His travels to Afghanistan cemented his commitment to build bridges of understanding between countries and to engage, educate and empower the world’s poorest people. Preston has worked with EcoZoom on strategic initiatives related to supply chain production capacity, cost, delivery and quality. He is active throughout the Seattle business and nonprofit community as board president of the Network for Business Innovation and Sustainability (NBIS) and as a partner of Social Venture Partners (SVP).

PSU Social Innovation Incubator

The SII provides social venture startups with capacity, community, connections and creditability. EcoZoom had an amazing first year in SII. It helped us understand a new set of hurdles and a new set of opportunities as we looked to stay on our current growth trajectory in year 2. We didn’t want to put on the brakes and SII provided the resources, expertise and support to keep accelerating. EcoZoom is looking forward to all the things we’ll accomplish in our second in SII’s Vector Program.

 

StarveUps

EcoZoom was pysched to be accepted into the StarveUps community. Starve Ups is an exclusive founders-only group serving idea and early stage entrepreneurs who provide each other their insights, resources and networks at no cost in order to provide peer mentoring at the highest level.  In turn Starve Ups is a virtual incubator and accelerator with its cornerstone as peer mentoring, which is exactly what Starve Ups stands for, excels at and focuses on as a group. Of the 7 founding companies all have reached profitability, 6 became multimillion dollar revenue generators, 2 have been acquired for positive investor returns and 1 became an Inc. 500 company. Results with subsequent members have been equally as impressive.

The Need for Clean Cookstoves

Three billion people – half the world’s population – need a safer way to cook According to “The Energy Access Situation in Developing Countries”, a review completed by the World Health Organization and United Nations Development Program, 91% of the population in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is without access to modern fuels. LDCs have 3 billion people – half the world’s population – relying on solid fuels of biomass and coal for their cooking needs. They primarily cook on open fires or unimproved cookstoves. These cooking methods cause problems for these people and the environment.

People

Smoke Inhalation - Exposure to smoke from traditional cookstoves and open fires causes 4 million premature deaths annually, with women and young children the most affected. Cookstove smoke contributes to a range of chronic illnesses and acute health impacts such as early childhood pneumonia, emphysema, cataracts, lung cancer, bronchitis, cardiovascular disease, and low birth weight. The World Health Organization estimates harmful cookstove smoke to be the fourth worst overall health risk factor in developing countries.

Personal Safety - The large amount of fuel needed for traditional cookstoves or open fires forces women and children to spend many hours each week collecting wood, which poses severe personal security risks as they forage for fuel from refugee camps and in conflict zones. Additionally, in South Africa alone 15,000 children a year fall into open fires and are badly burned.

Time & Money - Women and children can spend 4-6 hours each day collecting fuel for cooking. Households can also spend a great percentage of their income paying for charcoal, which leaves less money for food and other needs.

Deforestation - Reliance on biomass for cooking and heating increases pressures on local natural resources like forests. Deforestation rates around the globe are on the rise. Check out the speed of deforestation and deforestation rates for specific countries on Google Earth.

Climate Change - Open fires and inefficient cookstoves contribute to climate change through emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, and aerosols such as black carbon. Even when biomass fuels are renewably harvested, thereby avoiding a net increase of atmospheric CO2, these other greenhouse pollutants still contribute to significant climate warming. Recent research shows that black carbon contributes to 18% of global warming. An article from the New York Times states that, “In fact, reducing black carbon is one of a number of relatively quick and simple climate fixes using existing technologies – often called “low hanging fruit” – that scientists say should be plucked immediately to avert the worst projected consequences of global warming. “It is clear to any person who cares about climate change that this will have a huge impact on the global environment,” said Dr. Ramanathan, a professor of climate science at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, who is working with the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi on a project to help poor families acquire new stoves.” Learn more about this issue at the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and the United Nations Development Programme: The Energy Access Situation in Developing Countries report. (Download Report)

The Solution

Improved cookstoves burn fuel more efficiently and offer a solution to these problems.

People

Smoke Inhalation - improved cookstoves reduce exposure to harmful smoke and other emissions because they combust more fully than an open fire or unimproved stove. That means that the gases have more time to burn before they exit the stove. The extra time allows harmful emissions to burn away.

Personal Safety - improved cookstoves dramatically reduce fuel consumption which means that women and children do not have to spend as much time gathering fuel in dangerous places. The improved cookstoves are also contained fires, which are safe for children to be around.

Time & Money – as the efficiency of the stove decreases the amount of fuel needed, families can spend less of their income buying it and use that money for other things (like extra food or education). Or if they family was collecting fuel, women and children can save time and divert it to more economically productive activities like building a business or attending school.

Deforestation - as improved cookstoves use less fuel the need to cut down trees is greatly reduced.

Climate Change - improved cookstoves decrease CO2 emissions and black carbon, seen by many scientists as the number one and number two causes of global warming.   However, many people in the world do not have access to improved cookstoves.

Distribution of People with Access to Improved Cookstoves, 2007

Source: http://www.who.int/indoorair/publications/Energy_Access_Report_Brief.pdf

EcoZoom is part of the movement to fix this problem.

The EcoZoom Stove

EcoZoom stoves save 1-3 tons of carbon emissions per year, use up to 70% less fuel and burn 70% cleaner than the open fire. It can also pay for itself in fuel savings in a few months in areas where fuel is purchased. The stove is a safe, portable option that is accepted and used by cooks on six continents.

Z+ Timor Leste

Info coming soon!

Z+ Haiti

Developing a commercial market for cookstoves in Haiti is a difficult proposition. The tragic earthquake made it even more difficult. When Rotary International approached EcoZoom about providing cookstoves for distribution by a local NGO already on the ground, we were very excited. Having stoves on the ground is the best way to create demand for your product and show how valuable a clean cookstove can be in someone’s life. Funds from the Z+ Program allowed us to provide almost 1,200 stoves at well below cost to support this effort. Our Zoom Recho charcoal stoves have been in the field there for a year now and we’re getting good data back about it’s sustained use and durability in the field. Now we feel confident that the product is right for the market and can look for distribution partners who are interested in creating a sustainable market. Thanks to the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti for distributing the stoves, training end users and providing us with follow up data! Learn more about this project here.

Z+ Guatemala

After the success of our 10,000 stove pilot in Mexico, we were contacted by several groups in Guatemala who were interested in distributing the Zoom Plancha. They saw the stove in action through our videos about Project Mexico and wanted to test it in Guatemala to make sure it would also meet the needs of cooks there. Each organization we worked with had different needs for their project. Some needed stoves; others needed help paying for logistics or end user education and installation. Funds from the Z+ Program allowed us to fulfill the unique needs of each group. The results were successful pilots of 15 Zoom Plancha cookstoves with three organizations. With the initial pilot completed, we’re looking to move into the Proof of Concept phase with one of these organizations.

Z+ Namibia

  EcoZoom‘s first shipment of Z+ stoves went to Namibia, Africa. The recipient is Elephant Energy, a nonprofit that distributes appropriate sustainable energy technologies in Namibia and on the Navajo Nation. The country has a population of just over 2 million, of which 63% rely on wood for their cooking needs. Of those only 2% has access to an improved cookstove. The team at Elephant Energy believes that “livelihood activities in rural Namibia can be made easier, safer and more efficient with the help of appropriate sustainable energy technologies (“ASETs”). There is no reason why rural Namibians should live and work without access to energy when the technology to help them is proven and affordable.” The Z+ stoves are going for us in EE’s Women’s Energy Project. The rural women in these groups are leading the transition to renewable energy in their communities by testing revolutionary new sustainable energy technologies and providing feedback about the technologies that best meet the needs of rural Namibian women.