Got A Great Idea? Run With It! By Lam Lye Ching

A Red-Hot Idea

Jun Catan, 70, of Manila always believed in making full use of what is available. An entomologist, he set up a pest control company at age 26 using his own pest control inventions. One day in 1985, he threw some organic fertilizers that he had been experimenting with into a discarded can. A few days later, he noticed that the fertilizers were glowing very nicely after someone had thrown a lit cigarette into the can.

Could this be a new slow-burning fuel? “I decided to investigate,” he says. Catan had truckloads of water lilies, banana leaves, coconut waste, and other discarded plants shipped to his workshop. He mixed up different combinations of plants and pressed them into containers. Then he dried each combination to see if any of them would burn slowly while maintaining a consistent temperature.

Catan took five years to find the best combination. “I discovered that the secretion by the microorganisms make the plant a good source of fuel,” he says. The product was dubbed Green Charcoal, and can be made from an assortment of plants.

Because Green Charcoal was made from discarded plant waste, it was more environmentally friendly than wood taken from the forest. However, Catan knew he would have trouble selling it because it was more expensive than either wood or traditional charcoal. For the time being he used it in his pesticide factory while he figured out how to manufacture the charcoal more economically.

Through it all, he refused to give up. “I constantly thought and prayed about more and better ways,” Catan says. “I also kept thinking about people in the Philippines and all over Asia who had to walk many kilometers carrying firewood on their backs for cooking. I knew my products could help them.”

After extensive research, and with the help of the technical staff at his pest control company, Catan developed a machine – which he dubbed Organic Kooking – that uses Green Charcoal to generate hydrogen, which is used as a cooking gas. Since 2005, he has sold his Organic Kooking units to more than 70 restaurants and cafeterias in the Philippines, and he continues to supply them with Green Charcoal. As well, a tile company in Batangas, south of Manila, recently started buying Green Charcoal as an alternative fuel to liquefied petroleum gas.

Today, Catan’s daughter Ruth manages his pest control company, while he runs the Green Charcoal business, which employs 40 people.

“I am a full-fledged inventor,” he proudly declares. “My mission is to create jobs with new technology and also leave a legacy for my family.”