EA - Soaking Beans - a cost-effectiveness analysis by NickLaing

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Soaking Beans - a cost-effectiveness analysis, published by NickLaing on August 6, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.TLDR: On early-stage analysis, persuading people to soak their beans before cooking could cost-effectively save Sub-saharan Africans money, and modestly reduce carbon emissions. (great uncertainty)IntroductionAcross East Africa, hundreds of millions of people cook and eat beans multiple times every week. In Uganda where I live, beans make up an estimated 25% of the average Ugandan's calorie intake and 40% of their daily protein intake. Unfortunately cooking beans takes an absurd amount of time - usually two to three hours using charcoal or wood. The great news is that just soaking beans in water for 6-12 hours reduces cooking time by between 20% and 50% and has no negative effect on bean taste or nutrients . When we tested soaking vs. not soaking, cooking time reduced by half.Despite the obvious benefits of massively reduced cooking time using less fuel., very few people in Uganda soak their beans - nobody I know at least. I estimate under 0.5% of Ugandan families soak beans, but likely far less. I couldn't find any data on bean soaking habits in Uganda or Sub-Saharan Africa in general but I have heard anecdotally that it is common in some countries, perhaps Zimbabwe? (insider knowledge appreciated).Considering Uganda alone, Ugandans eat an estimated 10-20kg of beans per capita every year . Changing the behaviour of even a small percentage of Ugandans by convincing them to soak their beans, has potential benefits of reduced fuel burned, bringing about a range of environmental, economic and health impacts.Soaking beans could be IMPORTANT due to the potential environmental, economic and health benefits gained through reduced cooking time. It is NEGLECTED as no organizations we know of are working on mass media or other interventions to persuade people to soak beans. It may be TRACTABLE as people can immediately experience financial benefit from soaking beans through reduced expenditure on charcoal and time gathering firewood.Potential impact calculationsAssumptionsUptake: For simplicity, we assume that it may be possible to persuade 1% of Ugandans to change their behavior and soak beans. This is just a guess at what could be the outcome of a moderately successful campaign.Fuel/time saving: We estimate a 25% time and fuel saving from soaking beans (ref)Time horizons: If someone starts soaking their beans, once benefits are clear and the change is locked in, it seems likely that they and their family will continue to soak for a long time, possibly even indefinitely. On the other hand, Uganda could electrify faster than expected making much of this analysis obsolete (unlikely), or Ugandans could start eating something other than beans (also unlikely). To be conservative, we have capped our analysis at 5 years of benefit from the campaign.Counterfactual: For the purposes of this analysis we assume that all of the 1% of Ugandans who will change behaviour to soak beans is due to our intervention. This is somewhat reasonable as there are no current efforts promoting bean soaking, and it is very unlikely people will change their behaviour without a specific promotion campaignCO2 emissions prevented through soakingEnvironmental impact could come through two avenues - CO2 equivalent emissions prevented, and deforestation prevented. Although benefits of preventing deforestation could potentially be large, it is difficult to calculate so here we only calculate the potential CO2 emissions prevented, first through reducing charcoal use, then through reducing woodfire user.Charcoal: CO2 equivalent saved by bean soakingAbout 1 in 3 Ugandans use charcoal for cooking. We estimate the Uganda-wide amount of charcoal use for cooking beans through 2 diffrent...