Hasta La Ideas

The winners of Index awards 2009 were announced recently. And even though none of the inventions and designs we nominated made it to the winner’s circle, we’ll post our pick of the winners and the nominees we think should have won a prize. The stove above won the Home category. The idea with the Chulha stove is to reduce the amount of toxic fumes resulting from burning solid fuels indoors. Many households in the developing world still cook their food this way. The World Health Organization estimates that smoke causes some 1.6 million deaths yearly in the Third World. The Chulha stove also uses the available fuel (wood, dung, peat, etc) more effectively that an ordinary open fire. Philips Design, who have been working on developing the stove since 2005, now offers the design to anyone in the third world who will undertake production and distribution of the simple modular design.brbr