Yet one member of the audience at the conference spoke of spending four months in his home country to gather enough cardboard to make a single box cooker. What is abundant scrap to us may be a scarce and valuable commodity to others. The keys to a cooker's acceptance are many. Design and materials must be simple, the design must be adaptable to the available materials in a particular country, and the design must be easily taught and replicated by a local populace. Also, a cooker must be reliable.
Cultural attitudes are also extremely important.
In Botswana, one attempt at promoting solar cooking failed simply because the solar cooker is not used in the energy- guzzling industrialized world. In a village in rural Guatemala, a year after being given solar cookers, the were not using them. The reason was that fuel gathering was done by groups of women. Solar cookers isolated the women by denying them the socializing involved in wood gathering. Some Favorites Many box cookers were displayed at the conference.