One Earth Designs is a social enterprise that produces solar cookers. It is the winner of the 2015 Norwegian Energy Star Awards, the 2010 Green Challenge, 2009 St Andrews Prize for the Environment. One Earth Designs has branches in the United States, Hong Kong, and Norway.
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History
According to the World Health Organization, 3 billion people lack access to clean fuels and, as a result, household air pollution from cooking fires kills 4.3 million people every year in developing nations. One Earth Designs's founders began working with nomads in the Himalayas in 2007 in order to find a solution to the household air pollution challenge. Early solutions focused on reducing household air pollution alone. As more people from the community joined the project, it became clear that growing fuel-scarcity due to deforestation was creating pressure for fuel-free options. While energy poverty was growing as forest land declined, solar energy was still vastly abundant in the Himalayas. The team worked with local Tibetan villagers utilizing rapid prototyping and design thinking methodologies to develop solar-powered cookstoves, now called SolSource Solar Stoves, that replaced firewood with sunlight.
Technological Breakthroughs
Weather conditions are extreme in the Himalayas. The SolSource solar stoves that the One Earth Designs team developed needed to withstand sub-zero temperatures, high wind speeds, and sand-storms. In addition to numerous design break-throughs over the course of 54 prototypes, the team also developed proprietary reflector materials that achieve >90% efficiencies and are 3D formable. One Earth Designs continues to develop more efficient ways of capturing and storing solar energy for solar cooking, heating, and cooling both outdoors and inside the home.
Environmental Leadership
Although a young start-up company, One Earth Designs holds one of the highest Global Impact (GIIRS) Ratings and is on B Corp's Best for the World List, featuring the world's leading responsible businesses. One Earth Designs' website lays out its methodology for setting up sustainable supply chains and using Cradle-to-cradle design in making its products.
Products
One Earth Designs' flagship product, SolSource Solar Stove, enables people to cook using solar energy and was ranked as the Top Solar Cooker of 2016 by TopReviews.com. One Earth Designs states that SolSource heats up in seconds and can cook a meal in just ten minutes. According to its website, SolSource can grill, sear, steam, bake, boil, and fry. A number of videos showing customers' experiences with SolSource can be found on YouTube.
TopReviews.com scored SolSource on six key factors including: power, versatility, cooking capacity, durability, portability, and availability of supporting accessories to enhance the cooking experience. TopReviews stated that SolSource was more pricey than other solar cookers on the market but gave SolSource an 'A+' score on performance, writing that SolSource was an "advanced and super powerful parabolic solar oven that is able to cook literally everything that you’d put on it. A number one solution in terms of quality and cooking abilities".
Uses of SolSource Solar Stoves
SolSource Solar Stoves were originally developed to provide solar cooking as an alternative to cooking with polluting fuels like wood, dung, and coal. SolSource customers, however, have discovered a wide range of ingenious ways of using SolSource as an energy platform for their other activities. People now also use SolSource to purify water, power solar clothes ironing businesses, conduct sterilization/autoclaving for off-grid clinics, process waste, and run food vendor businesses. Some have even built ingenious add-ons on top of SolSource such as sterling engines for electricity and food dehydrators.
The One Earth Designs team has a long-term collaboration with MIT to use SolSource to power heating and electricity for the home.
SolSource Distribution in Emerging Markets
SolSource is used by people in over 60 countries. One Earth Designs and its partners, such as Solar Cookers International, have created adaptive local business models including barter-based and rent-to-own models to adapt to local cultural practices and business norms.
SolSource Distribution in Developed Markets
SolSource is available for sale on One Earth Designs web store.