APR 09

I think it's great that these inexpensive solar cookers are going to be going to lots of people who need them.

But I think it's sort of funny that the media (NPR/BBC/The World carried the story yesterday)is treating this as a new invention. Some of us were cooking our meals with them 25+ years ago.

And this is not the first semi-large scale roll out to places with limited fuel.

Great idea. Wish there had been enough done with the idea years ago.

Does the garlic supplement make the beef taste like garlic? Because that's like a supper-extra-bonus IMHO.

Pretty sure the garlic would turn up in milk.

Back when I grew up on the farm we used to have to keep the milk cows away from the spring onions.

We do something similar in the scout movement doing backwards cooking. were you stick a dixie (big steel pot) in a box and pack it with straw. I've made porridge this way and salmon, takes a while but taste awesome!

DFTBA

I can't believe this won a $75K prize. This design has been around for a long time. Example: Cooking with the Sun, Beth/Dan Halacy, c.1978 & 1992, ISBN 0-9629069-2-1

Do you have any idea what is the carbon footprint of an African compared to an American?

Thanks for all the comments regarding the Kyoto Box winning the FT Climate Challenge Competition. There have been a few posts pointing out that the solar-powered oven is not a new idea. The point of the competition was not to reward a eureka moment but to help an innovative approach to climate change reach the market. As Kyoto Energy founder and competition-winner Jon Bøhmer acknowledges in his company literature and on his application, the concept of solar cooking has been around since the eighteenth century.

There are other versions of solar cookers available on the web and there are also detailed explanations of how to make a version of a similar device. What distinguishes this approach is that the cooker will be mass-produced cheaply in existing factories, the finished item is to be flat-packed for bulk transportation to end users and is extremely cheap at $6.

The $75,000 prize money is going to enable Kyoto Energy to test durable, plastic versions of the cooker with 10,000 people currently burning fossil fuels to clean their water and heat their food. The expert judges and the thousands of members of the public who voted for the Kyoto Box agreed that this simple idea offered the best opportunity amongst the five short-listed ideas for an innovation to help tackle climate change on a big scale.

Please see the press release and our site for more information on the competition and its objectives.

Shannon Carr-Shand, Forum for the Future

Gosh, the next thing you know they will be replacing tanning booths by putting lounge chairs out in the open!!! Crap, I just gave away my entry for next year....

My wife and I volunteered this past September in S. Africa, we built similar solar cookers using an almost identical method (cardboard boxes, black paint, tinfoil, and seran wrap top). While I love the eco-benefit, Africa as a country has a very small footprint, its more about the cost savings for poor villages to use the FREE sun, as opposed to spending upwards of $40/month on perafine (gas) or wood. The village we worked in had already cut down all of their beautiful trees, the solar cookers are sustainable FINANCIALLY, not just environmentally. Consumer produced solar cookers, made of durable plastic cost about $35USD, our rudimentary cookers were made for about $5-$8.
As an FYI - the economic and environmental benefits are obvious, but teaching people to make a change from their old habits of buying fuel and cooking in half the time is really the ongoing challenge.

Solar cookers are not just about being environmentally friendly. They also about health. According to the World Health Organization, cooking fires in third world countries, cause 1.5 million or more deaths a year due to the associated health problems (lunch cancer, pneumonia, etc). So, eliminating wood-fueled fires with solar cookers would save millions of lives.

What's new about this? The fact that the mass media is finally taking it seriously, rather than dismissing it is as silly nonsense.

I ask the cynics, is it because they really do know it all or because 6 bucks for R&D or even a fraction of 6 would give them cold feet.

Very helpful, but hows the taste?