Mission Statement
The mission of the Kyoto Twist Solar Cooking Society is to support the spread of solar cooking in the world as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating poverty.
The cooking fuel crisis severely affects 2 billion people in the world today and creates hardship for many thousands more. The crisis is one of the pillars of poverty in the developing world. The smoke from cooking fires causes eye and lung disease. Deforestation due to this basic fuel need is responsible for drastic environmental consequences, such as lowered water tables, catastrophic soil erosion and changing microclimates. We hear of places where it costs more to heat the pot than to fill it. This results in malnutrition and misery for far too many.
The one energy source that is practical, affordable and available is the sun. Projects are providing the hardware and training for families to utilize this energy for as little as ten dollars per year. For a small percentage of what families now spend on wood, charcoal, or fossil fuels, they can receive training and own a solar cooker and save as much as half their conventional fuel.
At the same time, roughly one billion cubic meters of firewood is harvested non-sustainably every year and when burned emits over a billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, other pollutants and greenhouse gases into the global atmosphere. Most people don’t know that only 48% of the trees cut each year are used for industrial purposes like lumber and paper. 52% is burned as fuel and 80% of that is for cooking.
The solution comes up every morning!
