Inventor turns cardboard boxes into eco-friendly oven

[JTFrog]

By Saeed Ahmed

(CNN) -- When Jon Bohmer sat down with his two little girls for a simple project they could work on together, he didn't realize they'd hit upon a solution to one of the world's biggest problems for just $5: A solar-powered 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.

By allowing users to boil water, the simple device could also potentially save the millions of children who die from drinking unclean water.

...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/09/solar.oven.global.warming/index.html


I've seen these before, but never one that would actually bake bread... and how can you beat $5!?!

[hippywife]

1. That's a pretty run of the mill

very common construction for a homemade solar oven the plans for which have been out there available for decades, actually. So I'm not sure why such the fanfare in the article and by the contest judges. :shrug:

Not that it isn't a good idea. Just not new at all.

:hi: