Teen’s solar iron smooths a pressing problem — forest loss
bhubaneswar — On India’s residential streets, amid the tea vendors and vegetable sellers, ironing wallahs press clothes each day for millions of Indians, smoothing out wrinkles with iron boxes packed with hot charcoal.
But India’s 10 million ironing carts and shops take a hefty toll on the country’s forests. Each uses, on average, more than 5kg of charcoal each day, the government’s science and technology department estimates. Now, however, a 14-year-old girl, troubled by the heaps of used charcoal left by her local ironing vendor and by his painful wheeze from pollution, has developed an alternative: an awardwinning solar-powered iron.
“I calculated the enormous quantity of charcoal being used, the pollution from it that worsens climate change, damages Mother Earth and human health. I wanted to create a renewable resource to replace charcoal,” said Vinisha Umashankar from her hometown of Tiruvannamalai, in Tamil Nadu.
This week her innovation was recognised with the Children’s Climate Prize for its contributions to cleaner air. The prize, backed by a Swedish energy company, includes 100,000 Swedish krona ($11,600) to further develop the project.
It is just one of several national and international prizes Umashankar has won for her innovation: a wheeled cart equipped with solar panels and batteries sufficient to power a steam iron.
Panels on the cart’s roof produce solar power that can be used immediately as the cart wends its way between customers or stored in four batteries, Umashankar said. When fully charged — which takes just under five hours in bright sunshine — each battery can power the iron for six hours, she said, providing power on cloudy days, though the cart can also run on grid electricity or a generator in a pinch. To boost earnings for ironing vendors, the carts are also equipped with a mobile phone recharging station and a coin-operated telephone for making calls.
Umashankar said she hopes the cart — which she developed after school over six months — will improve incomes and health for ironing vendors and offer them “a dignified life”. It could also be used in other developing countries, she said in a telephone interview. She said she had designed the cart so it was easy to operate -— the system takes 15 minutes to learn — and she planned to produce online videos to help those who speak other languages understand how to use it. —