| Excuse us for tooting our own horn, but it was recently announced that Jack Howell, TIE's Solar Oven Project Director, has brought a singular honor to TIE -- the prestigious 2015 Energy Globe Afghanistan Award! If you've been a TIE supporter for a while, it's likely you've heard of Jack Howell and his work with solar cookers. If you're new to TIE, please allow us to introduce him. Jack Howell is a passionate Trust in Education volunteer, solar  cooker innovator, inventor, and brainstorm kind of guy. A retired publisher and author who spent two decades publishing books in Massachusetts, particularly books on solar, wind, photovoltaic, and organic gardening. The Solar Home Book, a New York Times bestseller, became a classic in the field and was translated into seven languages. In 1986, he founded Morning Sun Press in Lafayette, California where he continues to concentrate on renewable energy and the environment. In 1990, he published Cooking with the Sun: How to Build & Use Solar Cookers. He was hooked on solar cooking and has been designing and helping people around the world build and use solar cookers ever since. But Jack wasn't thinking about solar cookers or Afghanistan five years ago when he stopped to buy coffee beans at a Peet's coffee shop in Lafayette, Calif. That changed when he spotted a barista pouring the beans from shiny Mylar bags into a bin.
"Mylar is durable and expensive," he said. "I discovered those used bags were ending up in a landfill, and that gave me an idea."
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The Boys Team Charity assemble TIE solar cookers.
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He spearheaded a TIE effort that involved hundreds of volunteers,
from kids to seniors, which transformed discarded Mylar bags into more than 6,000 solar cookers. TIE then distributed these cookers to 19 refugee camps in and near Kabul, affecting the health and safety of more than 25,000 people.
The 2015 National Energy Globe Afghanistan Award, the world's most important environmental prize, recognizes outstanding performance in terms of energy efficiency, renewable energy and resource conservation. This year's competition attracted more than 1,500 entries from 177 countries.
TIE's solar cookers provide many benefits to Afghans, including clean energy from Afghanistan's abundant sunshine without the cost of expensive fuels. The solar cookers also prevent the devastating effects of smoke inhalation, which annually kills more than 4 million people across the globe. In the U.S., TIE's solar cookers have diverted 50,000 Mylar bags from landfills to serve a useful purpose.
 
The National Energy Globe Award also recognizes Trust in Education for Howell's innovative manufacturing technique for making WAPIs (Water Pasteurization Indicator), an elegantly simple device that helps Afghans determine when liquids have reached a temperature safe enough to drink. About half the drinking water in Afghanistan is contaminated. TIE has distributed more than 6,000 WAPIs with solar cookers and trained Afghans how to use them.
Watch Jack explain how to use a WAPI below.
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Jack Howell On How to Build a WAPI
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The conversion to solar cooking is yet another of TIE's educational challenges. What better place to start than with those who can least afford the alternatives?
Congratulations, Jack! Thank you for your commitment to TIE and leading this important project.
- Trust in Education
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P.S. Check out Budd and Nabi learning to cook with solar!
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Solar Cooking Lesson -
Trust in Education's First
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