Norwegian inventor's cardboard oven combats climate change
The solar-powered, cardboard oven. (Image: ecofriend.org)
A solar-powered oven made out of cardboard and tinfoil could help combat climate change by offering an alternative for people who rely on firewood to cook their food.
Millions of people around the globe depend on firewood to cook their meals, and that produces a lot of pollution. Well, now a Norwegian inventor has come up with an inexpensive way to use the sun's heat to cook food.
Keith Adams reports on "The World."
One of the most striking things about this award-winning idea is its simplicity. The solar-powered cooker consists of one cardboard box inside another, some tin foil to help catch the sunlight, and a perspex lid to trap the heat. And the cost should be around just five dollars.
Its inventor, John Bohmer, says that inside the solar oven it gets hot enough to cook but not enough to burn the cardboard. "You can boil and you can bake, but you cannot fry. So it sort of limits a bit what you can do, but I think the most useful thing it can do is just clean water. Then you can start doing things like boiling rice. You can make some succulent chicken in there as well."
Mr. Bohmer says his device could revolutionize the lives of the 3 billion people reliant on firewood for cooking. Aside from the environmental benefits such as slowing deforestation and the release of carbon into the atmosphere, the cooker will mean less hazardous and arduous trips into the forest for fuel, and by cooking slowly at low temperatures it helps preserve vitamins in the food itself. Trials of the cooker are now planned in countries across Africa and Asia.
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As a member of the Board of Directors of Solar Cookers International, I am thrilled at the prize won by Jon Bohmer for his solar cooker. The publicity it has generated will help raise the profile of this simple, powerful and renewable technology.
It is however, not a ‘new invention’.
The cardboard solar box cooker, for which Mr. Bohmer won $75,000 from the FT Climate Change Challenge is a variation on one of the many designs that have been freely available to the public for years on Solar Cookers International’s archive. http://solarcooking.org/. Take a look at the Heaven's Flame solar box cooker http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/radabaugh30.html or the minimum solar box cooker http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Minimum_Solar_Box_Cooker and the many other solar box cooker designs on our website.
The archive website contains extensive data on the design, construction, dissemination and international use of solar cookers to reduce carbon emissions and deforestation.
After logging on to the SCI web archive, users can click on build a solar cooker. There they will find detailed plans for a variety of cardboard, wood, metal and plastic solar box cookers, solar panel cookers and solar parabolic cookers.
Solar cooker advocates like Mr. Bohmer who have been inspired by the many designs currently available often come up with new variations and post them to our website where they can be shared with the rest of the world.
The solar box cooker is the oldest type of solar cooker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cooker. It was first widely promoted by two American women http://www.solarcookers.org/about/history.html who were among the founders of SCI in 1988. Our organization was initially know as Solar Box Cookers International. Another of SCI’s founders, Robert Metcalf has been traveling the world for decades teaching people how to build and use solar cookers not only for cooking but also for solar water pasteurization http://solarcooking.org/pasteurization/default.htm.
When refugee populations in Africa began expanding in the early 1990s and access to cooking fuel and clean water became a serious problem for these people, a more portable version of the cardboard box solar cooker was developed by Roger Bernard http://solarcooking.org/bernardart1.htm. Tens of thousands of these have been made and sold or given away. Solar Cookers International's Nairobi office has manufactured and sold or donated thousands of inexpensive cardboard and aluminum foil 'Cookit' solar cookers. The pot in the photo of Mr. Bohmer looks just like the black painted pots sold in our east Africa branch office.
The largest solar cooker project currently underway is in three Darfur refugee camps in Chad. http://www.parade.com/health/2009/03/solar-cooker-project.html The women in those camps have manufactured and distributed more than 30,000 cardboard and aluminum foil Cookits. Trips outside the camp to gather firewood have been reduced by 86%.
Almost all solar cooker projects, including the one in Chad are currently funded by small non-profits. There is little to no government funding available. And yet many governments continue to subsidize the purchase of bottled cooking gas by up to 50% and the charcoal trade is destroying the forests of Africa and south Asia.
Today, Earth Day I have organized a solar cooker demonstration at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California. Solar cooks from all over the country will gather at Google HQ to prepare food in many different models of solar cookers including a giant box cooker that can bake several hundred loaves a bread each day!
This is not new technology.
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