The good people over at AIDG have once again come up with an amazing (low cost, appropriate, and sustainable) invention to help the people of the developing world. Introducing the Rocket Box.

The Rocket Box stove is a lightweight portable stove, recently developed by AIDG’s R&D interns as a lower-cost, pre-fabricated alternative to common masonry stove models.

The Rocket Box uses 50-60% less firewood than traditional cookstoves and fires. This provides a huge costs savings for families that buy fuel wood. For instance, women we interviewed at San Alfonso, a cooperative in Guatemala, reported spending 28-56% of their monthly income on wood.

This stove design shows similar fuel efficiency to masonry stoves, but is up to 50% cheaper. Being portable, it is particularly useful in communities where residents are living in temporary housing and/or want more flexibility in where the stove is placed in their home. Like most good ‘improved’ stoves, it comes equipped with a chimney that vents smoke out of the home and thus cuts exposure to the ‘killer in the kitchen’.

Obviously if you can get the same amount of heating and cooking done for less wood it’s great. What I really liked about how they built this device is that they didn’t just get a bunch of scientists in a lab and figure out the mathematically perfect way to make this stove. They took into account the actual day to day and culture values that a stove has to have in order for it to be used.
No one is going to use the stove if it doesn’t cook the food the right way. Would you use a device if it made french fries turn to mush, or turned hamburgers into charred black balls?

They also built it out of things that the locals can get their hands on, making it a sustainable and local business model. Find pictures specs and much more here.