this squishy sludge of coconut waste could hold an answer to a deadly problem alhaji siraj ba spent months of trial and error developing his recipe for cooking fuel made out of coconut shells instead of trees i was like it's either it works or it works it needs to work so i need to do everything for it to work he lost his adoptive family in a mudslide when he was 17. before that he spent years living on the streets dreaming of the day he could launch his own business biobricket help prevent deforestation because they are produced from biomass waste they are not produced from wood he lives in a part of sierra leone that has lost 70 percent of its forest cover over the last five decades one reason for deforestation is people chopping down trees to feed their stoves tree roots are essential to holding back the earth during increasingly intense storms you move from having lush green mountains to dark brown death traps the question now is can alhaji convince people in freetown to swap wood-based charcoal for coconut briquettes we went to sierra leone to see how this young entrepreneur is saving trees using world wide waste coconuts are one of freetown's favorite on-the-go snacks vendors end the day stuck with heaps of shells that they need to get rid of somehow and that costs money this was supposed to be waste they needed to pay transport to dump this thing now i'm going to pick it up for free alhaji says his company rogue stall trading collects about two metric tons of coconut waste per week he's aiming for 10 tons by the end of 2022. so this is the backbone of our products this is well for us workers clean the husks and shells and dry them for about a week next they fire them inside this steel drum it carbonized for like 3-4 hours we put the fire out using water we have to wait for them to get dried they pulverize the charred coconuts into a fine powder and add water plus a secret ingredient to bind it all together the mixing is very challenging so the whole process depends on the mix a slight mistake on the formula you have to start all over again the extruder pushes out slimy rectangular logs that will need to dry for three to four days these ones are destined for shisha pipes in fact people who smoke hookah are his best customers these days rogue soul trading can produce about half a metric ton of briquettes in a day and they bring in as much as 4 500 on a good month we are the best selling brick and you can find our bracket in most of the supermarket in town they go for 70 cents per kilogram that's four times more expensive than the common wood-based charcoal but they burn at least four times as long alhaji's next big challenge is to grow his sails to reach people who will use his coconut briquettes for cooking fuel instead of cutting down trees it's not easy but it takes time it's very tough to build something great if it was not tough everybody would have done it so he has 10 full-time employees and up to 40 part-timers depending on the season and about a year and a half ago he expanded his business rogue soul trading raises and sells chickens too his mother says he's wanted to be an entrepreneur since he was a kid all they did look facebook facebook password but that all felt very far away when alhaji suddenly became the breadwinner for his family at age 12. he left his village hoping to make money to send home to his mother and sister i was just this kid who wanted to become somebody but i was not thinking straight i thought that it is just okay for me to move to freetown so without thinking about where am i gonna stay who's gonna feed me he was gonna take care of me but i moved he lived on the streets for four years until he found a steady job and an adoptive family who took him in seven to eight months after my adoption i lost my my family that i would live in during the mudslide over 1100 people died and 3 000 more lost their homes alhaji was left with just a few dollars to his name but he was desperate to do something to stop the deadly mudslides in the decade before the tragedy mudslides in africa had already claimed thousands of lives one of the reasons that causes most light is the vast amount of deforestation because the roots helps to keep this well firm alhaji began obsessively researching ways to stop deforestation he found youtube videos of entrepreneurs from around the world making biomass briquettes to replace wood in charcoal he started saving money for an expensive mechanical extruder and perfecting his recipe our formula is so outstanding that it can burn for like four hours it emits less smoke he pitched his business idea at a harvard competition in 2020 and won awards there and at the united nations and he recently landed new customers in germany in the uk but most people in freetown still cook with wood you just can walk up to somebody and be like hey this is new this is different from what you've been using so it's a bit tough but we'll get there one day according to a study in the philippines one ton of biomass briquettes saves roughly 80 small trees and that can add up but preserving trees isn't enough part of the solution yvonne aki sawyer became mayor of freetown by campaigning on a promise to plant one million trees by the end of 2022. freetown the treetown is replanting which include reforestation of hills reforestation of rivers along riverbeds reforestation of green corridors or creation of green corridors to also address another challenge heat stress our city is becoming so hot it was the 2017 mudslide that changed everything for her too i rushed up there and what i saw will be with me for the rest of my life literally a hole in the mountain the rain was still pouring people were crying screaming the devastating scenes continued through the day three days of unprecedented rainfall she told us that alhaji's project makes her feel hopeful for the future the work that elijah's doing is one of the ways in which you see the coming together of solutions for these multi multi-faceted problems of sanitation and the environment everybody drinks coconuts everybody eats coconuts i eat coconuts i drink coconuts almost every day [Music] you