KATHMANDU -- When Pabitra Kathayat sought to expand her water filtering business in western Nepal five years ago, she turned to Facebook. Demand had dwindled in the small highway town of Chhinchu, and her six employees were idle. She needed a new, sustainable venture.
That's when she discovered the page of Build Up Nepal, a social enterprise that trains rural entrepreneurs to produce bricks that promise to considerably cut carbon emissions and air pollution compared with their conventional counterparts -- a nontrivial change given the latter produce 37% of carbon emissions in Nepal, according to a 2020 study by the World Bank, which lists the brick making industry among the country's top polluters.
