Fun Family Project Is Important Invention

With all the problems facing the world today, sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking that the solutions can only be fould in scientific labs or think tanks after spending millions of dollars. But that's not necessarily true. Sometimes a solution can be simple, cheap and done quickly.

Jon Bohmer, a Norwegian living in Kenya, decided he wanted to do a simple project that his two young daughters could help with. He wasn't out to save the world, but just to have some fun with his daughters. But their weekend project wound up winning the $75,000 FT Climate Change Challenge, which rewards and publicizes innovative and practical solutions to global warming.

What Bohmer and his daughters had built was an extraordinarily efficient solar oven that could be built for around $5.00. Here's how CNN described the oven:

"The ingeniously simple design uses two cardboard boxes, one inside the other, and an acrylic cover that lets in the sun's rays and traps them. Black paint on the inner box, and silver foil on the outer one, help concentrate the heat. The trapped rays make the inside hot enough to cook casseroles, bake bread and boil water. What the box also does is eliminate the need in developing countries for rural residents to cut down trees for firewood. About 3 billion people around the world do so, adding to deforestation and, in turn, global warming."

In addition to eliminating the need to find and haul firewood, the oven could also save the lives of millions of children by providing a way to boil water cheaply and efficiently, killing the germs and making the water safe to drink.

Bohmer has named his oven the Kyoto Box, after the international global warming treaty. It is now being produced in a factory in Nairobi that has the capacity to produce millions of boxes a month. Now they just have to get the ovens to the poor people who need them. He has also now developed a more durable version out of recycled plastic, which can be made a cheaply as the cardboard version.

Bohmer says, "In the West, we cook with electricity, so it's easy to ignore this problem. But half the world's population is still living in a stone age. The only way for them to cook is to make a fire. I don't want to see another 80-year-old woman carrying 20 kilos of firewood on her back. Maybe we don't have to."

Maybe things aren't as hopeless as they sometimes seem.