Charcol as fire stater?

There's an old trick from tent camping. Take cotton balls and coat them in Vaseline. When it comes time to start the fire, split a cotton ball in half. The fresh innards of the cotton ball will easily take a spark from an igniter. Once the flame hits the Vaseline, it will slowly burn with a nice flame for quite a while. The nice part is that you can shove a ton of these in a tiny container, they're waterproof, and it costs pennies (if even that). Most people already have the materials, so it's free to them. Now these won't start an entire 4in log, but you could bypass the tinder stage (twigs and leaves) and start with kindling or fuel stage.