You wrote:
Sorry to hear that your trip didn’t achieve as much as you hoped.

Let’s just say that we have both been to the Philippines before. And if there is one thing we have learned about this country, it is that everything tends to take more time than you plan for.

You wrote:
Maybe the Filipinos have the right idea about how best to use sunlight for cooking. Let plants absorb the light and produce combustible material. Burn this wherever and whenever you want to cook your food.

At least that is what they have a habit of doing. And old habits are hard to break, as we know. It is also a fact that many people who don’t have much of an income earn a few pesos from preparing firewood for others. If everyone turned to solar cookers, it would probably have a negative impact on these people.

You wrote:
Some sort of stove in which wood can be burned, producing minimal air pollution

Yes, we have been thinking in line of making so called rocket stoves. As you can see from our travel report, the weather is not always nice there, so even if people start using solar cookers on days of sunshine, you still need a backup-solution for cloudy days.

The question is of course what local materials to produce the rocket stoves from. When I visited Carcar, I saw that there they had a lot of clay in the ground. I don’t know if we have clay on the island we stay on at all. On that island you typically have a 10-20 cm thin layer of top soil, before you come down to the volcanic rock in the ground.

Maybe we could use the rock itself as building material. After all, once that rock was molten lava, so in its solid state it might be able to withstand a lot of heat without cracking. Any thoughts on this matter?

You wrote:
Are there any local plants that fix nitrogen from the air? If so, they should be used.

Maybe it is. I’ll have to ask Joel about that.

Regards
Vidar

Maybe the Filipinos have the right idea about how best to use sunlight for cooking. Let plants absorb the light and produce combustible material. Burn this wherever and whenever you want to cook your food. Obviously, improvements can be made over the way they do it now, but the basic idea may be the best.

Some sort of stove in which wood can be burned, producing minimal air pollution, would be useful. And some way of recycling the ashes to fertilize the ground would make the process more environment-friendly. Are there any local plants that fix nitrogen from the air? If so, they should be used.

Best wishes.

David

Thank you for leaving a greeting to GLI, Joel. As a reply to the points your raised in your comment, I would like to reply and greet you, everyone in the Philippines and everyone else in the world with one of the most popular songs ever in the Philippines made by one of the local bands.

The chorus goes like this, quote:

“So I sing this song to all of my age
for these are the questions
we’ve got to face
for in this cycle that we call life
we are the ones who are next in line”

unquote

Given the big challenges ahead of us, we, the generations that live today, are very much next in line, indeed.