Why Solar Cookers Are Important for the Environment, Human Health and Safety

Simple as Flipping a Switch to Abundant Energy Supplies

In our modern day environment, flipping a switch to abundant energy supplies is usually an unconscious act with little awareness of the critical issues that lie behind it.  But many of the world’s inhabitants do not have a switch to flip.

About half the inhabitants of the Earth cook over wood fires — 45% of the world’s wood is used as fuel.  But there’s not enough to go round:  some 2.4 billion people are now facing shortages of fuel wood.

Meanwhile deforestation helps cause climate change, floods and soil erosion, increasing environmental degradation, and increasing poverty and hunger.

Smoky Indoor Cooking Fire

Wood smoke from cooking fires is a major source of air-pollution and an outright killer:  it causes respiratory infections which kill at least 5 million young children each year.

At the same time millions of people do not have access to clean drinking water, causing widespread disease, especially among children:  the WHO says diseases spread through contaminated water cause 80% of the world’s illnesses.

There’s a simple answer to help ease some of these problems, that can save millions of trees, provide clean, safe drinking water, doesn’t pollute, and that costs very little – a cardboard box.

Most cardboard boxes end up in the garbage dump.  Recycling them saves wood, saves water, prevents pollution and saves a lot of energy.

Kyoto Box Solar Cooker

But, while recycling 60 or so cardboard boxes might save one tree, one cardboard box solar cooker can save at least one whole tree all by itself, each year.

Solar box cookers are easy to make — one cooker designed to be simple enough for 10-year-olds to build without special tools in less than an hour is now helping to feed refugees in Africa (and to save trees).

Solar cookers can cook, bake, braise, stew and fry food and can also be used to pasteurize water using only the clean free energy from the sun.  The 3 most common solar cooker designs are parabolic, box and panel cookers.

Parabolic Solar Cooker

 Parabolic Cooker:  The sun’s rays are captured in a reflector which focuses them at a point under a pot.  The effect is like a stove top burner or a campfire.  Temperatures can reach above 400 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to fry food.  Also called a Curved Concentrator solar cooker.

Wooden Solar Box Cooker

 Box Cooker:  The sun’s rays are received in an insulated black box with a transparent lid which lets in the sun’s rays.  Inside the box, this sunshine turns to heat which is trapped in the box.  The effect is similar to the oven in your kitchen.  Temperatures can reach around 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

CooKit Panel Solar Cooker

 Panel Cooker:  A combination of the two systems which is portable and less expensive.  Temperatures can reach around 250 degrees Fahrenheit.  (This is ample because cooking begins at around 180 degrees Fahrenheit.)

Many solar cooker designs are portable which allows for solar cooking anywhere that the sun shines.  So whether you build a solar cooker yourself or purchase one that is ready to use, you will enjoy the benefits of clean non-polluting solar cooking with solar energy direct from the sun.

In our next post we will show you how to build a simple and inexpensive cardboard box Solar Cooker that can be built in a few hours and would make a great family project.

Do you use a Solar Cooker?

Share your experience with others and help spread the word about natural sun powered solar cooking by leaving a comment below.

Thanks,
-Red

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Tagged as: Environment, Health, renewable energy, Solar Cooking, Solar Energy, solar oven, solar thermal, Sun Powered, sustainable technologies