Solar Cooking For The Rest Of Us
Louise Meyer and Patricia McArdle of Solar Household Energy, Inc. and the resource site SolarCooking.org, demonstrate several solar ovens, ranging from shaped trash cardboard covered with foil (cheap, effective, but not durable), one used in Afghanistan that sells for about $25, to an elegant origami folded aluminum product that will last forever. Solar ovens might be seen as amusing novelties in the U.S., but they’re life savers in other parts of the world.
In Somalia, for example, each person typically uses four bags of charcoal per month for cooking. That’s equivalent to a large tree that takes 50 years to grow in that arid region of goats and camels. When the village of Bander Bayla was struck by a tsunami, the relief effort included 950 large solar ovens, able to cook just as quickly as the fuel burning stoves they replaced, eliminating further deforestation and unhealthy smoke from their cooking fires. This YouTube video has that story.
Here’s a video of smaller solar cookers, including the one being unfolded in the animated GIF:
