Letter To John Bohmer, who invented a solar cooker called Kyoto Box which can save millions of poor people.
Dear Mr. John Bohmer,
I would first like to say that I was very impressed of your little invention called the “Kyoto Box.” I never thought that an invention that is only worth 5 dollars can save the whole world. I think you are a not that kind of a person, who only thinks about himself and thinks about the money they will get for winning the contest. I believe you made this invention because you care about the poor. Anyway, the reason I am writing this letter to you is because I have some questions for you that I am really curious about. Well the following are my questions.
First, what is the specific reason why you planned to make this little invention? I mean, were you sure that you were going to win this contest? Did you make this Kyoto Box for fun? Because to be honest, nobody would’ve thought that this 5 dollar invention would win the contest and I would never make it even though somebody tells me to. Second, what is more important to you? Your invention or your money and the fame you get from it. Could you even be willing to donate the money you got to the poor? Third, I would like to know when the “Kyoto Box” would be on sale in Korea. I think it will be really good for cooking and the fact that it is only worth 5 dollars just persuades me to purchase it.
Lastly, I would like to know if you are going to make another invention that could save our environment. I believe that a person like you can make many more cool and cheap inventions. Incase you don’t have any idea for another invention; I would like to tell you some of the ideas I thought of. First, I think you should make a mini solar car that is a size of a cart that is used for shopping. This would be good because poor people who have no money to buy a normal car would be able to purchase this car. Not only that, it is solar which no gas will be used and will help the world from global warming.
The second invention I thought of is a sticker or a pad that would kill all the bad bugs that smell or go near it. This could be used in forests and trees that are located in poor African countries. This will reduce the death of children who die every year because of harmful insects. Last, I would like you to make a solar air-conditioner. This would be really cool because this thing could sense the hot sun and the hot weather and turn on by itself. Which then in night, it would turn off by itself as well. This invention can help people to not waist their energy by using electronic air conditioners.
I hope that this letter didn’t exhaust you and that my questions and opinions are persuasive enough for you to answer them or think about them. I would really want to see you someday and talk more about things that you and I could do to save the environment.
Sincerely,
Jason Moon
Dear Mr. John Bohmer,
I would first like to say that I was very impressed of your little invention called the “Kyoto Box.” I never thought that an invention that is only worth 5 dollars can save the whole world. I think you are a not that kind of a person, who only thinks about himself and thinks about the money they will get for winning the contest. I believe you made this invention because you care about the poor. Anyway, the reason I am writing this letter to you is because I have some questions for you that I am really curious about. Well the following are my questions.
First, what is the specific reason why you planned to make this little invention? I mean, were you sure that you were going to win this contest? Did you make this Kyoto Box for fun? Because to be honest, nobody would’ve thought that this 5 dollar invention would win the contest and I would never make it even though somebody tells me to. Second, what is more important to you? Your invention or your money and the fame you get from it. Could you even be willing to donate the money you got to the poor? Third, I would like to know when the “Kyoto Box” would be on sale in Korea. I think it will be really good for cooking and the fact that it is only worth 5 dollars just persuades me to purchase it.
Lastly, I would like to know if you are going to make another invention that could save our environment. I believe that a person like you can make many more cool and cheap inventions. Incase you don’t have any idea for another invention; I would like to tell you some of the ideas I thought of. First, I think you should make a mini solar car that is a size of a cart that is used for shopping. This would be good because poor people who have no money to buy a normal car would be able to purchase this car. Not only that, it is solar which no gas will be used and will help the world from global warming.
The second invention I thought of is a sticker or a pad that would kill all the bad bugs that smell or go near it. This could be used in forests and trees that are located in poor African countries. This will reduce the death of children who die every year because of harmful insects. Last, I would like you to make a solar air-conditioner. This would be really cool because this thing could sense the hot sun and the hot weather and turn on by itself. Which then in night, it would turn off by itself as well. This invention can help people to not waist their energy by using electronic air conditioners.
I hope that this letter didn’t exhaust you and that my questions and opinions are persuasive enough for you to answer them or think about them. I would really want to see you someday and talk more about things that you and I could do to save the environment.
Sincerely,
Jason Moon
Hi Jason,
ReplyDeleteJon Bohmer here. Thank you for taking an interest in our products. I have some answers for you:
1) Cooking is serious stuff, as it leads to all kinds of environmental and human suffering. But actually making the box was fun, as I am not so handy (I am a designer not an artisan) I could still make this - with some help from my kids. I have been looking at solar cookers for years, and have been mostly trying to make a reflector based one that can fry food (which box cookers can not). But they ended up being too expensive (most parabolic cookers are 100-200 euro) and poor people just dont have that kind of money - especially for something that they have not even seen before. I have done a lot of research on the history of solar energy, and as you can see on our presentation on www.kyoto-energy.com I have devoted a page to the unknown heros. Horace de Sausseur invented the hot box in 1767 - to the year 200 years before my birth - and yet this is not a common device today! Marrying it with cardboard seemed an obvious idea - cardboard was invented in the 1880s so in principle the Kyoto Box could have been made 130 years ago (with glass instead of plexiglas cover but still the same effect. Why didnt anybody do that? The consequences are mind-boggling. 10 million lives saves per year for 100 years? NGOs dont think of this stuff unfortunately, so it is up to entrepreneurs to do it.
The most important thing about the Box is to get it into peoples hands, and that is why they gave us a place in the final. When I saw that the other 4 finalists were all projects for the developed world, I knew we had a chance and we arranged email viral campaigns, facebook groups, made a Youtube video and so on. And it paid off!
The Kyoto Box is actually two products. The cardboard version is the DIY version which is great to teach how solar energy works. Schools, scouts and so on are very excited about this. But if you are to use the Box every day, you will want the plastic version, whichis the one we are mass manufacturing. It will withstand rain and spillage and will last a very long time. Plus, there is 10 billion tons of plastic waste floating around in the Pacific - we need to start recycling plastics on a large scale, PP (Polypropylene) is great as it is only consists of carbon and hydrogen - and can easily be recycled from water bottles etc. We envision a world with plastic credits just like we have carbon credits now - I believe the plastic problem to be at least as serious as climate change. 30% of all animal species will die from not being able to discern plastics from food.
I have used all the money I could on R&D for tools for the poor for the last 5 years, and if we stand to finally make some money we would just do a whole lot more R&D. My dream is to have a large research center where inventors come to have their prototypes made and tested. Further, we are contractually bound to use the money from the FT Prize for the Kyoto Box rollout, which is just fine by me. Of course, we will use it indirectly to make the support infrastructure for a global rollout - web site, databases etc.
I dont really believe in donations in general because it doesnt scale. Receiving donor money in Africa is like winning the lottery. The UN does a few things to take pictures for their yearly reports mostly, but I would guess 90% goes to uphold their massively expensive infrastructure. I mean, they hire secretaries from Europe who gets house, cars, servants and double pay ("risk allowances") to come live in Africa - when millions of highly educated Africans are jobless. Government doesnt work either as with non-profits they have no performance measurement which simply harbors alternative motives for their staff. Business was invented in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago and is deeply ingrained in everybody. You have simple performance monitoring (profit/loss, balance sheets, factory output, ROI etc. etc.) So for me, doing business with the poor is a pleasure and an opportunity to scale to full market penetration. In fact, the carbon credits mean that the poor dont have to pay - the polluters in the west do. Poetic justice.
The Kyoto Box PP version will cost 10 euro in developed countries, it is a Buy One Give One model (BOGO) that will help us scale further. We might also sell carbon credits with the boxes online. Availability from June/july.
Just by being here I get all kinds of ideas, as necessity is the mother of all invention. You see these fundamental problems and the head starts thinking of ways to fix it - the engineers worldview :-) Right now, we have a pipeline of about 30 products on the way, many are products from other vendors that we think are so smart we just have to offer them too, such as the Hippo Roller (www.hipporoller.org). You can see our first 6 products on our web site. The most advanced, which I started on 10 years ago is the Butterfly, a solar concentrator from aluminum and plastics that has the complexity of a bicycle. We hope this will lower the price of solar electricity to a quarter, making it the most affordable electricity source on the planet - if you are living in a sunny climate that is. Most devloping countries have the most solar resources so these kinds of products could become the "Great Equalizer". If solar is the cheapest form of energy (and the most benign and dependable) then industries have to locate in developing countries to be competitive. Sudan and Niger, as the sunniest place on earth, would see an unprecedented industrial boom - all renewable.
An electric cargo bicycle is actually one of the products we are working on! Interesting coincidence... We have found the parts we want to use, including a variable transmission and some new batteries that survive tropical climates. We will make it from aluminum extrusions which is our favourite material. City traffic moves at 6km/h anyways so there is no need to make cars that are made to go at 150km/h for cities. Even in rural people mostly use handcarts etc. which is horrendously straining.
We are also making plastic houses with integrated solar cooling/heating - they will be very affordable and perfect for slums, refugee camps and IDPs. We actually use the night sky radiation (about 10% as powerful as the sun in the daytime) for cooling down water, which is stored in a tank under the house and circulated through the floor and walls when it is hot in the daytime.
My background is as a multimedia software entrepreneur, I built three software companies over the last 20 years which are all doing really well. So I am of course also working on some new multimedia software for smart mobiles - which I belive will totally replace simpler mobiles in only a few years as a function of Moores law. I mean, bought my 7-year old son a $50 mobile and it has color screen, camera, music and so on. Smart mobiles with microprojectors - (connected to or integrated in) wll be awesome for schools in developing countries that can not afford books and even teachers. Imagine when everybody has access to the same information - it is less than 5 years away now and nobody can stop it.
So in summary: The 3 billion poorest people are waiting for their IKEA. Our goal is to build a brand and distribution channel globally that offer sustainable, simple products for modern living. By taking the poor seriously, we hope to be their choice in implementing dignified living conditions. Our projects include solar and bio energy (algae growing systems for medicine production in the villages), water (pumps, desalination, cleaing), housing, transportation and information. That should keep us busy for a while... :-)
Sincerely,
J:-)N
Oh, on the sticker/pad to remove insects - I looked into mosquitos and research shows that the males and females have different wing frequencies. When they want to mate they adjust their frequencies to be the same. (Sounds practical :-) So if we made a zapper with a sampler and speaker that could listen for mosquito frequencies, imitate the mating frequency adjustment, make them come sit and then ZAP. It could be a 5x5cm $5-10 device driven by a tiny solar cell like those on calculators. I have no idea if this will actually work, but with 2 million people dying from malaria each year I am surprised that so few are trying new ideas. Prevention is better than the cure...
ReplyDeleteDear Mr. John Bohmer
ReplyDeleteI've heard that you producting and selling your kytobox in Indonesia and Africa. As a Vietnamese, i wonder that why don't you expand your product to Vietnam - a developing tropical country? In here, the sun shine a lot and we (more than 90 million people) spent a lot of money on gas for cooking.
Your truthly
Dear Mr Jason Moon
I would like to thank you about your blog, it's very useful 'cause vie it i could connect to Mr. John Bohmer
Thank again
Sorry about my terrible English ^^