The point of this blog
is to ‘create a new understanding of health and sustainability through a
combination of modern world creations and the reintroduction of some forgotten
principles!’ And I think this post, as brief as it is, fits the criteria
perfectly!
It’s one thing to know
about an applicable bit of wisdom but I have found that until you are forced
into a situation where you have to use that bit of what you already know, do
you actually make the effort to apply it.
My daughter and her
friends won the Young Designers Award at the Eskom Eta Ideas for Energy
competition last year.
(See post http://freshearthorganicfood.blogspot.com/2012/11/my-daughters-team-wins-eta-awards-young.html
)
They won with a
research project about energy savings and introduced the concept of the ‘hotbox’
to the judges. Now before your eyes glaze over with memories from your college
days, I’m talking about the concept of taking an already cooking pot, and insulating
it either in a blanket or a container made specially for that purpose, so that
it passively cooks itself. I use a very large polystyrene box to make my yoghurt, it
works like a charm. But because I use it to store all the yoghurt tubs and
other goodies for my market stall during the week, I don’t ever use it to cook
with. Last night I cooked a meal which required all of the elements on the
stove plus one! I still had rice to cook and had no space for it. So my husband
came up with the ingenious idea of seeing how the cooler box would work as a hotbox. It insulates, right?
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So I let the rice boil
on the stove for five minutes and then transferred it to the cooler box,
dropped a blanket on top of it and closed the box. It cooked in the same amount
of time but with a fraction of the gas!
This
is really important information!
It should go viral! No matter what our
socio-economical situation is, most of us have a cooler box, which sits redundantly in a corner until there’s a braai at someone’s house! This cooler
box can become your number 1 energy
saving asset. I’m being very serious about this! If everyone started using
their cooler boxes tonight, 71% of South Africa ’s domestic energy
crisis would vanish overnight! And think of what you could do with the extra
money in your pocket! Really super-duper-extra seriously, try it.
This post
applies to you!
Today is the day!
We recently invested in an eco-cooker, which works with green gel made from sugar cane, and a pair of eco-lights, made from recycled plastic that work with lamp oil made from sugar cane. I have happily cooked rice, pasta, curry, chutney, etc. on the eco-cooker and it works wonderfully!! The eco-lights are perfect for the lounge at night when we're watching telly, and they create a lovely calm ambience. The whole kit cost R320 from Mica in Dunkeld, of all places. In addition, we got a Bokashi bucket from Impala Fruit & Veg in Northcliff (for a 3rd of what the online shops are selling them for), and a packet of Bokashi bran, and now all our food scraps (all!) go into that. Surprisingly, there's no smell, just a sort of earthy mustiness, not offensive at all. With the local recycling initiative run by Piki-tup, we have virtually nothing to throw away into the Municipal landfill. It's surprisingly easy to reduce your footprint if you just put your mind to it... I love your idea and will give it a try soon!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for that very useful info Jen, you're right, we are all particular about things in our lives and most us take the time to make sure something or other is just right, if we all applied that fastidiousness to going green, it would make all the difference!
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