Seeing the Future, Reflected in a Solar Stove
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 07.20.05
Wonderful picture, this: grandma's cooking emerging from sustainable technology. This sort of transformation is most needed outside the US cultural frame, though. TreeHugger covered the designs of several great looking solar cookers in an earliler post.
Ms. Kerr (shown on left side of photo) is with the Kerr-Cole Sustainable Living Center, and collaborates with others to transfer solar cooking technology and energy efficient cooking tools in general to developing nations. All it takes to realize how important more efficient cooking can be is to travel to a developing country where women and children spend the better part of their day gathering fire wood and lugging it home, then fill their homes with smoke while they cook, and, in doing so, consume local forests. The health toll from breathing wood and coal fumes alone is serious enough to warrant getting this technology out.
Barbara Kerr rocks! not only was she instrumental in getting 10,0000 solar ovens to African families (so they don't have to burn precious wood)... she also has a southern facing kitchen... so she installed a solar oven inside the house (!) it's right next to her sunfrost fridge.