Solar Ovens - Save More Than Money

As the world's population increases and nonrenewable sources of energy (e.g., forests) for cooking dwindle at a rate of 1 acre per second, or 86,400 acres per day and seriously damage the ozone layer through the burning of coal, the need to switch to renewable energy sources such as the sun grows ever more critical. Solar ovens are rapidly becoming a major solution.The largest consumers of energy, second only to automobiles, are household appliances. Items such as stoves, ovens, and refrigerators account for 30 percent of electricity use in industrialized nations and 12 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. The use of solar ovens would have a major impact on energy consumption in the United States, since an estimated 5 percent of its fossil fuel consumption is dedicated to the cooking and distribution of food.In developing countries, greenhouse gas emissions from cooking originate from sources other than fossil fuel, especially fuel wood such as charcoal, resulting in the deforestation of our forests. As a result, in recent years, several organizations have been prompted to supply and train people in Africa, Asia, Mexico, and Central and South America, in the use of solar ovens. These are regions where people have long depended on the now rapidly vanishing firewood supply. Sun oven cooking has significantly improved the lives of tens of thousands of people, allowing them to not only prepare nutritious food for their families but to purify drinking water, reducing water-borne diseases such as amebic dysentery. Sun ovens also aid in the preservation (drying) of food. One company, Global Sun Ovens supplies individual ovens plus a larger one that cooks 1,200 meals a day, supplying food for entire villages, hospitals or orphanages. Just one of these Sun Ovens saves 150 tons of wood and 277 tons of CO2 greenhouse gas emissions annually. The solar oven is a viable solution to major environmental problem worldwide. For every BTU consumed from the suns energy is one less BTU consumed from our trees and fossil fuel supplies, saving not only our trees, but reducing the devastating impact on our environment. A solar oven can be built from materials purchased from most grocery or hardware stores. Sun ovens can be used to prepare anything that can be made in a conventional oven or stove - from baked bread to steamed vegetables to an 18 pound roasted turkey. Solar ovens will not only do all of this and more, it is accomplished with zero emissions and no warming of our globe or heating up our kitchen and placing additional demands on cooling systems. Nearly 75 percent of US households prepare at least one hot meal per day; one-third prepare two or more, according to the Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Imagine the impact made from cooking just one meal a day using the power of the sun.