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Johannesburg, August (GYRP) – A hearty meal of beans, veggies and rice might not be considered tasty fare by most delegates at Johannesburg’s Summit on Sustainable Development, but a small sidewalk exhibit with this on offer attracted lots of attention from passers-by.
The dish, similar to what many rural people in Africa eat every day, was cooked in the open outside the Convention Centre using only the power of the sun.
Solar cooking is an extremely cheap and versatile way of preparing food, yet many people still haven’t been hooked to the power of the sun.
The process works by using sunlight as fuel. A solar cooker just needs an outdoor spot with several hours of sunshine. Cooking a meal takes about twice as long as a conventional oven but the food only needs to be stirred occasionally and water can be sterilised in 20 minutes.
One model of the solar cooker called a ‘CooKit’ requires a dark pot with a tight lid to capture the heat, a transparent heat trap – a plastic bag will do – and a shiny reflector, like a silver-backed piece of cardboard.
At present there are 100,000 cookers in use in India and China and 5,000 in Kenya.
Solar cooking is not a new idea. The inventor is believed to be a Swiss naturalist, Horace de Saussure, who died in 1767.
Since then the idea has been developed in different ways, to make the cooker safer and more portable:
v The box cooker has the advantage of slow, even cooking of large amounts of food. The pot is placed in a box with a transparent lid and is faced toward the sun. This variety is most widely used in households.
v A parabolic cooker focuses the light into the bottom of the pot. This method requires more attention, cooks fast and at high temperatures.
v The ‘CooKit’ is the most widely used cooker because it incorporates elements of the other varieties. It is the cheapest version and is simple to make.
While solar cooking has already proved a godsend to many rural households, millions are still cooking over a smoky fire and spending hours collecting firewood. Solar cooking would free up these families’ time and income and help to conserve forests.
If you think solar cooker is something that could be useful to your community, then contact Tom Sponheim at: webmaster@solarcooking.org.
Ó Global Youth Reporters Programme
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Lauren Kansley
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