A cheap solar cooker has won $75,000 prize in a contest for green ideas. The cooker could sterilize water and could help 3 billion poor people cut greenhouse gases, and fight global warming.
The Kyoto Box is made from cardboard and can be used for sterilising water or boiling or baking food.
The Kenyan-based inventor hopes it can make solar cooking widespread in the developing world, supplanting the use of wood which is driving deforestation.
Other finalists in the $75,000 competition included a device for streamlining lorries, and a ceiling tile that cools hot rooms.
Organised by Forum for the Future, the sustainable development charity founded by Jonathan Porritt, the competition aims to support concepts that have "moved off the drawing board and demonstrated their feasibility" for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but have not gained corporate backing.
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"The Kyoto Box has the potential to transform millions of lives and is a model of scalable, sustainable innovation," said Peter Madden, the forum's chief executive.
It is made from two cardboard boxes, which use reflective foil and black paint to maximise absorption of solar energy.
