My Solar Christmas

As a Christmas gift, I donated 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 Easten 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.

Here's another youtube report on a solar cooker workshop held in Nyala, Sudan under the auspices of the Darfur Peace and Development Organization.



I also gave the gift of bees and trees as I do every year through Heifer International. Donate bees, trees, rabbits, geese, chickens, goats, as well as heifers to a project from their catalog somewhere around the world, including the US, in the names of your loved ones.

I like to give bees because they are all about pollination and improving agricultural production. Investment in pollination in these days of colony cluster disease is especially important.

I like trees because they are also a carbon offset. I've given a decade and more's worth of 60 trees a year to Heifer International. That should do something to absorb some of the carbon my energy use has released to the atmosphere.



Last but certainly not least, I also gave a few 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 $25 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. A good deal.

I gave these solar flashlights because

Solar IS Civil Defense

Solar Water

The Watercone® is a solar powered water desalinator that takes salt or brackish water and distills it into freshwater. It is simple to use, lightweight and mobile.

Designed to produce 1.5 liters a day, it provides a child's daily needs for fresh water and reduces the number of children who die as a result of drinking unsafe water, currently estimated to be 5000 or more each and every day.

The WATERCONE® is a long lasting UV resistant Poly Carbonate product and can be used up to 5 years daily. The material is non-toxic, non-flammable and 100% recyclable. The black pan for the saltwater is already made out of 100% recycled PC. Even when the WATERCONE® becomes old and tarnished, it can still be used to collect rain water, as a roof panel or container for other goods.

The Watercone® project is looking for investors and companies to initiate mass production tooling and distribution. So the Watercone can be manufactured for a lower price and become affordable to the people in need...

Single products are not available at the moment!

The Watercone® was tested in Yemen in 2004 and in the Lake Baikal region of Russia in 2005.

Thanks to Ecogeek for bringing this design to my attention.

Until everybody who needs one can get a Watercone®, you can pasteurize water in clear plastic bottles by exposing them to the sun.

The Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS) process is a simple technology used to improve the microbiological quality of drinking water. SODIS uses solar radiation to destroy pathogenic microorganisms which cause water borne diseases.

SODIS is ideal to treat small quantities of water. Contaminated water is filled into transparent plastic bottles and exposed to full sunlight for six hours.

Sunlight is treating the contaminated water through two synergetic mechanisms: Radiation in the spectrum of UV-A (wavelength 320-400nm) and increased water temperature. If the water temperatures raises above 50°C, the disinfection process is three times faster.

You can raise the temperature of the water in transparent bottles by putting them in the sun against a dark background.

Simple Solar Rules:
Dark heats up
Light reflects
Clear keeps off the wind

As suggested above, years from now, when your Watercone® wears out, you can use it to collect rainwater for the gravity drip irrigation system exhibited at the recent Design for the Other 90% show at NYC's Cooper-Hewitt Museum.



Change the color of the gravity drip bag to black and you have a solar hot water heater. [See Simple Solar Rules above.]

There are lots of other things you can do with sunlight and plastic containers.

I plant my garden a month or six weeks early by practicing Recycled Solar. Place a ring of plastic bottles on the soil, fill them with water, plant seeds of your choice (I've grown tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, beans, and greens with this technique) in the middle, and cap it with another bottle with its bottom cut out. This makes a solar heated coldframe or cloche.



Solar IS Civil Defense.

"You Can Fix All the World's Problems In a Garden"

"You can solve them all in a garden. You can solve all your pollution problems and all your supply line needs in a garden. And most people actually today don't actually know that and that makes most people insecure."

So says Geoff Lawton from the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. He proves it here with a video describing how permacultural design and a local team desalinated the soil and grew a garden on 10 acres of barren desert land two kilometers from the Dead Sea. Within four months, the trees produced their first figs.

"We could regreen the Middle East. We could regreen any desert...."

I think Candide would agree. I'm not sure about Voltaire.

Here's a recycled solar cloche I found in Candide's garden.

Solar IS Civil Defense

Thanks to worldchanging for alerting me to this permaculture story.

Originally posted at dailykos.