But people all over the world rely on traditional wood fires for cooking, where the smoke has terrible health effects as well as damaging the atmosphere.
In India alone, over 800 million people rely on traditional mud stoves and as women are traditionally those that cook and collect fuel, they are impacted worse.
This all seemed like another doomsday environmental story until I saw what some clever people had come up with to solve the cooking stove dilemma.
A newly designed stove that reduces smoke produced by 70-80 percent and cuts the amount of fuel required in half may well be a key step to solving this issue.
As someone who believes strongly in the concept of open-sourced intellectual property for concepts that improve the wellbeing of people and the environment, I was literally stoked to see people developing such a clever device and sharing it with people in need.
If only some of the many other environmentally friendly technologies that were around were open-sourced, perhaps we would be making more headway in reducing our impact on the planet?
Another example is this inspiring video of lighting the homes of poor people using plastic bottles:
Or the plethora of great ideas that can be found if you use Google Translate on the this Argentinian website.
If you know of any other open-sourced ideas that can help the environment, please email them through to me or leave a comment as the more we know the more we can do.
Sam Judd is 2013 Young New Zealander of the Year and co-founder of the charity Sustainable Coastlines.