Westerners take access to electricity for granted, but a ridiculous portion of the global population has to scramble for twigs and other unsustainable fuel sources to cook their food. SunOven is an off-grid solution to that problem, and the distributors have set up an NGO to help 40 developing countries gain access to them.
SunOven is a portable oven that gets 100 percent of its power from the sun – no matter the climate. As long as the sun shines, it can dehydrate fruit in the middle of the tropics or bake bread in a cold northern country.
A kit comes complete with a recipe book that offer no-fuss 600 recipes to cook meat, roast chicken, steam vegetables and anything else possible in a kitchen, along with a thermometer, a leveling leg to keep the oven from tipping or spilling food, and collapsible reflectors that can be adjusted to direct the sun’s rays for optimum cooking temperatures.
There are two different sizes – one that is ideal either for camping in the United States or for a small family in other parts of the world. Super resilient, the solar-powered appliance weighs just 21 pounds and will last more than 20 years
The other, the Village SunOven, is designed for large-scale feeding situations that require cooking great volumes of food quickly – such as orphanages or refugee centers. They could be particularly useful for over one million Syrian refugees in dire straits in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.
This oven can boil, steam or bake large quantities of food and reaches temperatures of 500° F / 260° C with no fuel costs, and the company has formed an NGO and teamed up with government programs in order to distribute the SunOvens throughout the globe.
For those who have a little extra cash to spare, the US-based firm has set up a program to enable regular citizens to purchase a SunOven for a family or community in need.
With Ramadan and summer at full swing, and power shortages a daily reality, residents of Lebanon and Egypt would get a lot of mileage out of these.
A basic kit goes for roughly $300.
Author: Tafline Laylin
As a tour leader who led “eco-friendly” camping trips throughout North America, Tafline soon realized that she was instead leaving behind a trail of gas fumes, plastic bottles and Pringles. In fact, wherever she traveled – whether it was Viet Nam or South Africa or England – it became clear how inefficiently the mandate to re-think our consumer culture is reaching the general public. Born in Iran, raised in South Africa and the United States, she currently splits her time between Africa and the Middle East. Tafline can be reached at tafline (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
The growing millions of poor people in the USA need a solar oven, but they don’t have the money.
If they have food, this is an amazing appliance. Scrambling for twigs and branches should not be the plight of any person, let alone an entire population. It simply sickens me to know what is happening to our world at the hands of the energy cartels. There, but for the grace of God, go us all.