This is a guest post from GMoke, who has a life-long passion for making solar power and energy efficiency a reality. Here are his thoughts for the holidays.
Every year over the last decade and more, I’ve bought trees ($60) and bees ($30) from Heifer International. Usually, I pick the project and designate where I want them to go. It’s part of my annual giving plan. Recently, I realized that all those trees I’ve donated are my own personal carbon offset program.
Over the years I’ve found some other great solar gifts as well.
You can donate solar ovens to people in the refugee camps around Darfur. For the people there, who are at risk every time they have to leave the camp to seek scarce fuel, a solar oven can mean survival.
Jewish World Watch sends two solar ovens to the Iridimi and Touloum refugee camps in Chad for $30.
There are other solar oven programs as well.
This video from German CARE is especially close to my heart because it shows a woman in one of the 3 international displaced person camps they run in Eastern Chad using a solar oven and a “haybox” or retained heat cooker to prepare a meal.
The haybox is simply an insulated box into which you place a hot pot. The heat has nowhere to go but into the food. You can also use a stone as a heat reservoir: heat the stone, place it in the box with a pot of food, cook. It’s an old, old technique updated with solar. I love these ancient solutions to common problems.
Over the past week I’ve learned of another Darfur refugee stove project, one that has modified traditional cooking methods for greater efficiency and less pollution. This is the Darfur Stoves Project. I plan to contribute to them this year as well.
We need many more efforts of this kind as traditional cooking stoves are inefficient, cause respiratory distress to those who use them, and produce black soot that can contribute to climate change by as much as 18% of the recorded warming, according to one estimate I’ve seen. New and better stoves for the poorest people around the world is a great leverage point for climate, development, and a better quality of life for billions of people.
You can give a solar LED flashlights and AA battery chargers to friends and family. These Bogolights are very well designed with one button (on and off) and one screw to secure the battery bay. There’s even a phosphorescent band so you can find the flashlight in the dark. They work as reading lights too. I know because I tried them out. They also use standard AA rechargeable batteries and allow for battery switching, charging one set of batteries while using another set in a second device.
Bogo means “buy one, give one” by which they mean, you spend $39 to buy one for yourself and the company sends a second to somebody in the developing world. You can even choose where and what program. This is a good way to begin your own solar transition while raising the quality of life for one of the quarter of the human population of the world who does not have access to electricity.
Another giftable solar device is Freeplay’s Companion solar/dynamo radio, light, and cell phone charger. You can easily modify it so that you can charge AA, C, D, and other dry cell batteries and have a reliable source of low voltage DC power day or night, by sunlight or muscle power. This is the ultimate solar survival tool and, after all, Solar IS Civil Defense. This device will supply you with solar and hand-crank power for the flashlight, radio, cell phone, and extra set of batteries (with a simple modification) that we all should have on hand in case of emergency or disaster.