- Each year almost 2 billion tonnes of wood is consumed worldwide for cooking.
- 50,000 people die every day from water-born diseases such as Cholera. The World Health Organisation 80% of all illnesses are spread through contaminated water.
- Solar cookers save the labour of collecting sticks and branches for firewood. There is also a danger to women collecting firewood due to injuries from snake bites, critters and the high risk of being personally attacked.
- Solar cookers save families money. Reduces the need to purchase firewood, charcoal, and kerosene. If a solar cooker is used regularly then it can help reduce cooking fuel costs by about 30-40%. This money can be used to fund education for children, as well as provide basic provisions and a better quality of life.
- Solar cookers help reduce exposure to smoke inhalation. Indoor fire cooking is reported to kill 1.6 million people per year and acute respiratory infections are a leading cause of disease and death in the developing world.
- Simple solar cookers can relieve health, financial and environmental burdens facing millions of people. Education, NGO collaboration and cost effective solar cookers help spread the word about cheap alternative energy devices like the solar cooker.
- Nine quadrillion, that’s (9,000,000,000,000,000) kilo watts of solar energy fall on the continental United States every hour. This is the equivalent energy available from 4.25 trillion barrels of oil per day. The utilization of less than .001% of this renewable resource would satisfy all our energy requirements. So there’s plenty of energy available. All we need to do is figure out a way of putting the sun to work for our mutual benefit. Let us start harnessing that power by using solar ovens and spreading the word.
- 1000 Watts of solar energy = one square meter of direct sunlight hitting the Earth
1kWh = 3,400 BTU’s. 1kWh = 0.02 gallons of fuel oil.
- Solar cooking is safer than cooking with fire.
- Food tastes better. The low temperature and slow cooking allows the flavours to remain as the flavour isn’t cooked out and not driven out through steam cooking.
- Solar cooking saves lives. Drinking water which carries water-borne diseases is estimated to kill more than 3 million children per year. Water can be pasteurized at temperatures of 65C making it safer to drink and reducing common ailments such as diarrhoea. Most solar cookers, including the most basic solar box cooker can pasteurize water.
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3 Responses to “Solar Cooking – Did you know!”
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April 9th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Why would you cook indoors with a fire? That is what stoves are for.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Why isn’t anyone answering my question?
That is rude!
June 14th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
@Jenni, many aplogies for the late reply.
Many people have no choice but to cook indoors with a fire, the cost of a stove is way beyond many of these peoples’ purse strings.
Solar cookers can be integrated to cook food indoors, via reflective panels which deflect the sunlight to the kitchen. This would save money in the long term, as there would no need for reliance of firewood and conventional cooking fuels.
Regards
Sol