A new program is trying to get people with old wood burning stoves toupgrade to less polluting ones. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’sLester Graham reports… government agencies and the private sector areworking together on the project:
Transcript
A new program is trying to get people with old wood burning stoves to
upgrade to less polluting ones. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports… government agencies and the private sector are working
together on the project.
The EPA says a clean-burning stove can reduce wood smoke emissions by up
to 85-percent. Since hundreds of thousands of homeowners in the Great
Lakes region burn wood to heat their houses. New stoves could reduce wood
smoke emissions dramatically. Many of those homeowners bought their stoves
before 1992 when more efficient and less polluting models hit the market.
That’s why Environment Canada, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and
several state environmental agencies are co-sponsoring a program that takes
an old stove or fireplace insert as a trade-in for some pretty substantial
discounts. Up to three-hundred dollars. The new stoves burn wood more
completely, so not as much wood is needed to produce the same amount of
heat. And the steel in the old stoves is recycled. The program, called
the “Great Wood Stove and Fireplace Changeout” is handled at the retail
level and runs through the end of April.
For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.