When Sarah Collins was looking for an initiative to get involved in, her vision wasn't small or local. Then she saw an old hay box and knew she'd found her opportunity - a project that could make the environmental movement relevant to individual households - and the Wonder Bag was born.
Collins is the founder and CEO of Natural Balance, and co-designer (with manufacturing partner Youth for Development) of the Wonder Bag, an insulation bag that retains the heat of pots and crockery, allowing for hours of cooking time after just a few minutes fuel use.
"What we have is not something new. I didn't invent the technology behind slow cooking and the insulation bag. Every time there has been an energy crisis, this way of cooking has come to the fore," says Collins.
But Collins has pioneered the programme whereby international carbon credit trading subsidises the cost of purchasing a Wonder Bag, and the methodology of quantifying the energy savings on a non industrial scale. The bottom line is that each Wonder Bag saves 1 t of carbon every two years, if used two or three times a week.
"What I realised was that conservation was very much the domain of the white middle-class male, and I felt that for these issues to become broad-based and for us as Africans to take them seriously, we needed to look at ways to involve young people in conservation," she says.
With a background in environmental tourism, Collins has always been passionate about conservation. She approached NGO loveLife with a plan to extend its outreach and awareness campaigns beyond the realm of personal health and into that of the community environment.
"If you live in a rubbish dump, what's going to inspire you to take care of your health and wellbeing? So I started an environmental movement called Take Back the Future, which is now one of loveLife's premier programmes."
But Collins was looking for something more revolutionary than the "talk shop" feel of the traditional environmental movement. "I realised that the chance of turning Africans into environmentalists overnight was absolutely zero when they were struggling to make ends meet. I knew our only hope was if it saved them money or time." This was the thinking that led to the Wonder Bag's invention.
"We are raising money in the Western world to fund projects in developing countries that will make a significant difference to climate change through behaviour change. Once people start using this, they become interested in other ways that they can become involved. From a household perspective, you can save R200/month. That is significant in rural households."
Collins approached Climate Care, part of JP Morgan's Environmental Markets group, which partnered her in developing a project that produces carbon credits from the energy savings that are traded on the global carbon stock exchange.
The project is a programmatic clean development mechanism (CDM), being accredited by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The CDM was designed for industrial projects, so Collins and JP Morgan had to create the methodology for assessment of a programmatic project. They completed three kitchen surveys this year, and have been approved by the UNFCCC auditor's most recent draft report, a process which usually takes two years.
"If we had to try to penetrate the market without the carbon financing, we would have been putting the bag on sale at R400-R500, but we are selling at R150/bag.
"We are looking to go into local retailers within a year. My mission is to have a Wonder Bag in 1m households within two years. Just as 20 years ago nobody used sunscreen, and now it is unheard of to go into the sun without it, in 20 years it will be unheard of to have a kitchen without a Wonder Bag."
Ranking the Analysts 2009
Each Wonderbag saves a ton of carbon every two years