Partner Spotlight: One Earth Designs: Clean Energy for the 21st Century
One Earth Designs began in 2008 as a team of students and Himalayan nomads working together to combat fuel scarcity and household air pollution by designing cleaner cookstoves. Six years later, we opened a social enterprise with branches in the US and China to deliver our products to people in need around the world.
Our high-performance solar grill, SolSource, and solar cookware are now used by families in 18 countries on 6 continents. Rural entrepreneurs are tackling localization of delivery models. Benefit Lab and GIIRS have given us some of the highest ratings for social and environmental impact on record, and customers are actively participating in multi-national projects managed by our R&D team to design even better clean energy products.
Our hybrid non-profit/for-profit business model enables us to serve the needs of all customers equally and to develop products for emerging market customers that meet their needs rather than the needs of intermediary funders.
Highlight: SolSource in China
The majority of our customers in China are nomads, farmers, or resettled peoples who use SolSource in order to save money, time, and fuel. In the process, SolSource reduces their exposure to life-threatening stove smoke and opens up opportunities for education and income generation, especially for women.
Customers boil 3-4 kettles of water each day to make tsampa (the local staple food), mian pian (a popular noodle dish) and tea. They also steam dumplings and make stir-fry dishes and breads on SolSource.
One customer from Jianzha told us, “It cost my family about 200-400 RMB (US$33-66) for fuel each month. The fuel cost is so high, it was hard for us to buy enough food and sometimes we could not heat the house. After we got SolSource, we don’t face these problems anymore.”
Another customer said that her older daughters “had to collect fuel instead of going to school”. Because she uses SolSource now, her family doesn’t need as much fuel and she is sending her youngest daughter to school.
Highlight: SolSource in USA
In the US, we have customers from California to Boston and from Michigan to Texas who have set up SolSource in their backyards and started grilling steaks, sautéing veggies, baking stuffed peppers and more.
SolSource provides people with a way of cooking with the sun even in the snow. SolSource user, Kevin Cocco from Utah writes, “Cooked lunch (salmon) in the snow on SolSource today! Clear skies, 24F (-4C), and sun altitude only 26 degrees above horizon. Worked great!”
Responsible Manufacture
In addition to designing a high-performance solar grill, we’ve aimed to manufacture it using environmentally friendly materials and processes even down to the packaging. David Bosch of Michigan told us that SolSource packaging was some of the best he had seen in terms of “not just sustainability but also wonderfully protecting the dish from damage during shipping… You can tell a lot about a business by how they choose to pack their product”, he said. We love that our customers care about this as much as we do.
To try out SolSource for yourself or get involved in our work, check out our website at OneEarthDesigns.com.
Catlin Powers is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at One Earth Designs, an organization creating clean energy for the 21st Century.
Photos by SolSource users, Kevin Cocco and David Bosc