Online drive to ease haze over Chiang Mai

The Stop the Smoke! campaign is the first step in the Warm Heart Foundation’s five-year plan to eliminate 50 per cent of the smoke. It is also challenging the Chiang Mai Community to do its bit in eliminating the remaining 50 per cent. 
The project will remove the equivalent of smoke from 688,575,560 cigarettes. 
Dr Michael Shafer, the foundation’s director, said that though the campaign will remove “just a puff of smoke from our air, it is a first concrete step in the right direction”. 
The campaign will run at www.crowdrise.com/stop-the-smoke/fundraiser/warmheartworldwidein, from Sunday and all donations can be made via the website. 
Funds raised in the campaign will be used to buy biochar from farmers in Mae Chaem district to use as fertiliser. These farmers normally burn 95,000 tonnes of corn crop waste and generate 594,700kg of smoke. Producing 1 tonne of biochar requires 5 tonnes of corn waste and prevents 31.3kg of smoke.