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Published on: 7/14/2009
Last Visited: 7/14/2009
Paul Munsen has seen such things.
Once a successful marketing consultant, he runs an Elburn-based business that brings solar ovens to developing countries.
It's worthwhile work, he says, adding that trying to make a difference means more to him today than trying to make a buck.
But bills keep coming.
"This year, if things continue going well, we might actually turn a profit," Munsen says, smiling slightly.
"I haven't paid myself since 2001."
As president of Sun Ovens International, he has, among other things, refinanced his home to help keep the business running.
"I was fortunate, having had the home paid off," he says, matter-of-factly.
"Sooner or later, the money will work itself out."
Trees, charcoal vanish
Munsen is involved in something called the Temple Solar Project.
Since 1997, a number of Rotary clubs in this area have helped provide people worldwide with an inexpensive energy source called the Sun Oven, the largest of which looks like a small satellite.
The invention uses solar panels to turn sunshine into an economical replacement for charcoal and wood-both of them scarce and extremely expensive in impoverished places such as Haiti.
The Sun Oven's original inventor, a Milwaukee resident and restaurateur, went bankrupt trying to market the solar cooker, which he designed in 1986.
Munsen and a group of investors bought the patent several years ago.
After AIDS, deforestation is the world's most serious problem," Munsen said.
...
"Sun Ovens can have an enormous impact on the everyday life of millions of people," Munsen said.
"The ovens can reduce the demand on forests and reduce health hazards."
An estimated 2 billion households worldwide depend on wood and charcoal to prepare food.
The supply of wood is rapidly disappearing.
With each passing minute, for example, there are 200 more people on earth and 50 acres less forest.
"By harnessing the sun's rays, our ovens offer a free, reliable, nonpolluting energy source," Munsen said.
He said the solar cooker is being used in 126 countries.
The largest of the models, the Villager, can bake bread for about 150 children a day when the sun shines.
On days when it doesn't, there's an attached propane gas tank-a backup unit-which still saves fuel, Munsen said.
The Villager model's cost is prohibitive, however: The Villager sells for more than $10,000.
Some Sun Ovens have been donated to orphanages in developing countries by various Rotary clubs.
Munsen speaks at the meetings of many groups and organizations, sometimes soliciting funds for shipping solar cookers overseas.
...
About the size of a suitcase, the small solar oven can cook any kind of food with the power of the sun, Munsen said.
"The individual family model reaches temperatures of 360 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit," said Munsen.
Sun Ovens employs four people in the Elburn industrial park where its located.
Supporters say that inside the standard-sized suburban brick building, Munsen means business, wanting to provide a clean and almost limitless supply of cooking fuel to as many places as it's needed.
...
Munsen has addressed the United Nations on environmental issues and has worked with the U.S. Department of Commerce to find a Haitian Partner to manufacture and market the solar ovens in that country.
Sun Ovens have been shipped to North Korea and Afghanistan, among many other countries.
The company has opened an "in-country" assembly plant in Ghana and plans to open two more in Haiti and Uganda by the end of the year.
Munsen says making the ovens "in-country" will both lower the cost of the cookers and empower Third World people by giving them jobs.
In Haiti, where the per capita income is less than $1,500, what little money people have is literally going up in smoke, Munsen said.
Bags of charcoal are sold at open air markets, sometimes to the highest bidder.
Human beings often "go up in smoke," too.
Munsen said 5 million children a year die in nations like Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Angola from breathing smoke or carbon monoxide from their family's cookstoves.
To the Western way of thinking, the economic and environmental problems solved by a switch to solar cooking in developing countries make the conversion seem "completely logical," Munsen said.
But resistance to this seemingly magic lantern has arisen in the Third World because of a variety of factors, including entrenched customs.
"People feel happiest with what they know," Munsen said.
"Change comes slowly, but we've had some significant results.
"So far, what we're doing is just a drop in the ocean, but it's a drop nonetheless," Munsen said.
A small solar cooker-the family model, not the Villager-can bake, boil, or steam just about everything under the sun, Munsen said.
A 2 ½ pound beef roast takes less than two hours to cook.
Three pounds of baked chicken can cook through and through in just over an hour.
The Villager can do all that and much more, including being able to sterilize medical instruments.
He expects the average life expectancy of the Villager model to run into the decades.
"It comes complete with a trailer and is built to last," Munsen said.
For more information, call Paul Munsen at (630) 208-7273.
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