OrjaBox

OrjaBox – featured in the Down to Earth Magazine

admin — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 16:51:39 +0000

Our small effort to promote green fuels for cooking has been featured in the Down to Earth Magazine.
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/

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Adding Clean Cooked & Dried Flavors to our life

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2022 17:09:31 +0000

Dried fruits and vegetables retain large amounts of vitamins, fiber, and minerals. Sun-dried products can be stored for use in soups, cereals, and trail mixes (like delicious snacks). Your sun-dried harvest doesn’t contain preservatives or chemicals.

The process of preserving food is something mankind is familiar with since the days of yore. Several folklores recount the methods of preserving foods in one way or another in accordance with the local and cultural traditions. The idea was to prevent food from spoiling and help make it last longer while keeping it fit for consumption. Though there are various ways of preserving food, drying and fermentation are said to be the oldest methods of preservation. The idea was to eliminate the water content in the fruit and vegetables thus preventing bacteria, yeast, or fungi from growing on them.
Drying as a method of preservation has numerous advantages. Food becomes lightweight and easy to carry due to the reduced water content in it.

Mission At ORJABOX

OrjaBox promotes LPG free cooking by using a combination of solar energy, biogas and biochar. They have also introduced solar dryers and a range of solar dried products. They make flavorful solar dried products and conduct solar energy awareness sessions. They are leading their clean cooking mission and sustainable cooking journey with their innovative service offerings.
They sell solar cookers, biochar cookers and briquettes made from garden waste. & solar dried vegetables and blends. OrjaBox services strongly believes in sustainable cooking, food-energy-water nexus, clean cooking awareness and education.
Sun-dried Products are prepared using ripe fruits and vegetables that have spent a good deal of time basking in the blazing sunshine. Post this process, they lose their moisture but maintain their nutritional value. They also absolutely burst with flavour in their sun-dried state. They lose their moisture but maintain their nutritional value. They also absolutely burst with flavor in their sun-dried state.

How To Use

Serve with appetizers
Add to your salads and sandwiches
Add to soups, pasta & other cooking
Use in hummus, dips & marinades

Health Benefits

Support Immune System– Sun-dried products are rich in vitamins and minerals as they are derived from fruits and vegetables.
Aid in Digestion– For example -100 grams of Sun-dried tomatoes have more than 40% of the daily recommended intake of dietary fiber. While both soluble and insoluble fibers are present in sun-dried tomatoes, the majority are insoluble. Thus, Sun-dried products can be a good choice in aiding constipation.

Why buy Solar dried products from ORJABOX?

Highest Quality, flavorful blends.
Healthy, Fresh and Crispy (like Onion).
The tomatoes are high in lycopene, antioxidants, and vitamin C, and low in sodium, fat, and calories.
Hygienically dried with Solar Dryers.
Lab tested for nutritional values and shelf life
Dried foods are tasty, nutritious, lightweight, easy-to-prepare, and easy-to-store and use.

The energy input is less than what is needed to freeze or can, and the storage space is minimal compared with that needed for canning jars and freeze containers. The nutritional value of food is only minimally affected by drying.
History of Sun Drying and wind both have been used for preserving food through the process of drying since time immemorial. Sun drying is one method of preserving which is used in abundance in
various parts of the world, even today.

Order now and contact them at below links :-
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orjabox/
Website: https://orjabox.com/
Place your order on 9422567442
#driedfruits#nuts#healthyfood#driedfruit #trailmix #healthysnacks #seeds #dryfruits #health

Credits : Abrekha Jain

(Software professional and mother of two Abhrekha Jain offers lessons to working mothers from her own experiences in life and at work.)

https://abhrekha.blogspot.com/

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OrjaBox – A step towards a Sustainable Future

admin — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 17:27:59 +0000

Eighty-four percent of households that use traditional solid fuels along with LPG cite high cylinder costs as one of their reasons for reverting to traditional solid fuels. This finding is significant in the context of the ongoing surge in LPG prices, which have risen to over Rs. 1000 per cylinder. Several rural beneficiaries of the Ujjwala Yojana find it unaffordable and are forced to revert to woodfire cooking, a health hazard. Burning wood or animal dung can result in high levels of indoor air pollution from smoke. Air pollution due to cooking has been underestimated for years and is seldom discussed on more prominent platforms.

According to the @World Health Organization, about 4 million people die prematurely from illnesses attributable to household air pollution from inefficient cooking practices like stoves fueled by wood or animal dung and open fires. Indoor air pollution primarily affects women and children as they spend more time at home. Close to 50% of the deaths due to pneumonia among children under five years of age are caused by soot inhaled from household air pollution.

The numbers are alarming. We need to act now! @OrjaBox has taken the initiative to make people aware of how solar cooking can help us solve the above problems. Encouraging such initiatives and scaling them up with government support is the need of the hour.

OrjaBox is a Pune-based #Social Entrepreneurship Initiative. It aims to make clean cooking affordable and accessible to individuals and communities. Its mission is to spread awareness about #clean cooking and its advantages to public #health and the #environment. People generally do not prefer solar cookers as they are bulky and take more time to cook than conventional cooking methods. Despite that, it is high time to start using #renewable energy to cook food. #Solar cooking reduces pollution and greenhouse emissions. In fact, the slow cooking process helps food retain all the nutrients and the original taste of ingredients. Solar cookers have tremendous potential in clean cooking, particularly in #community cooking and #mid-day meal programs at Government schools.

Does the idea of solar cooking excite you, but you are unsure about how to practice it? Here you go!

Vishakha Ma'am, the founder of OrjaBox, has never used an LPG cylinder in the last couple of years. I was curious to know how that was possible, so I marched to the OrjaBox office in Kharadi, Pune. She showed me various types of solar cookers available, explained the use of each type of solar cooker, and offered me solar-cooked tea. I was very excited to taste it as it was my first solar-cooked tea. She prepares almost everything except Roti with the help of solar cookers. She prepares dishes like Biryani, Pulao, Ghee, Sabji, Daal, and Rice, to name a few. To taste your first solar-cooked meal, visit the OrjaBox website ( https://orjabox.com ) and register for the upcoming solar meal session. The session will prepare you to use solar cookers for cooking your daily meals with zero pollution, and you can save up to Rs. 10,000 annually by using solar cookers! Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

You must be wondering how to practice clean cooking in a rainy season. OrjaBox has a solution to that too. OrjaBox also specializes in other clean cooking alternatives like smokeless cookstoves and steam cookers based on Biochar and Biogas, which makes OrjaBox a truly versatile organization in clean cooking. OrjaBox also offers sun-dried products which are worth trying. The products have zero preservatives, are 100% natural, and the taste remains intact. The sun-dried onions can be used for Biryani and similar dishes. You can eat sun-dried tomatoes, a healthy replacement for tomato chips, as snacks and carry them with you while traveling or trekking. #Self Help Groups can benefit from sun-dried products by collaborating with OrjaBox under its OrjaKsham initiative to start producing sun-dried products and improve their #livelihood.

The ‘#Clean Cooking Energy’ Roadmap developed by @NITI Aayog and @Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH envisions Household Air Pollution (HAP) free India by 2025. Social Entrepreneurial Initiatives like @OrjaBox will play a crucial role in achieving this ambitious goal.

Thank you, @Vishakha Ma'am, for coming up with an inspiring and impactful initiative that will help us quickly achieve multiple #Sustainable Development Goals and move a step closer to a sustainable future.

Happy #World Environment Day to All. Let us make our Earth greener and healthier again 🙂

Signing Off
Abhijit Rathod

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Children’s Day Special Event At Orjabox

admin — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 16:55:29 +0000

I am Shruti Joshi,I have just completed my 12th Std. Instead of whiling away my time amidst the next admission process, I decided to join Orjabox,a company that promotes cooking with green fuels. I am interning with Orjabox for over three weeks now. The very first activity assigned to me was to co-ordinate a solar activity day for Children.

Orjabox has always been coming up with different initiatives to promote cooking with green fuels like solar energy and bio energy. We as a team have created a solar space and will love to have many more people getting acquainted with solar energy. Renewable energy is and in the longer future will definitely be the need of the future.
Our latest event held on 14th November on the occasion of children’s day was one step towards educating the younger generation about solar energy. This was my very first experience as an intern. The entire coordination and management was in my hands. We planned the event according to the kids’ interest.

We had 21 participants for the first batch,ranging from 8years of age till 18years. And all of them were equally curious and excited about their first experience around solar equipments.
They were introduced to various types of solar cookers,their working and demonstration. Also, the working of solar water heater, driers and lights were explained to them. To make their experience more informative yet fun, we had them take a look at the cooking of a solar meal and relish it. All of them quite enjoyed their time indulging in games and interactive conversations.

Overall the entire event was in an efortless flow of
information exchange, fun, games and all smiles. I couldn’t have
asked for a better first experience at work.

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Clean Cooking Demonstration

admin — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 13:45:41 +0000

Learnings from Rural Maharashtra

We have re-started conducting field demonstrations to promote clean cooking in rural and peri-urban areas. These demonstrations are an effort to connect all aspects of clean cooking together to facilitate wider adoption. Here are our learnings from our recent interaction with folks in a village close to Pune city.

Social Aspects:

During this demonstration we experienced that woman wanted to try most of the improved cookstoves which we presented. However, they were not confident of making the buying decision without their husband or other senior male member of the family.

One woman narrated that her husband insists that she uses firewood for cooking as it was freely available in ample quantity. He has not allowed her to refill the LPG bottle. They have recently shifted to their newly constructed home. She said the kitchen of her new house is already black with soot.

Operational challenges:

Initially women do not feel confident of handling slightly complex or modern looking cookstoves. They are shy of raising their concerns about operations and then device their own ways of using modern cookstoves which might be harmful or inefficient. Eg. They are used to the slow pace cooking with biomass cookstoves which gives them lot of time for preparing ingredients after they lit the cookstove. However, with LPG such behaviour leads to wastage of the fuel. Flame regulation, using right kind of vessel size etc. is unheard of as best practice.

Manufacturers of improved cookstoves do not enough resources for customer education (esp. rural/remote customers) and outreach. During our demonstration we realised that so far this village has been exposed to just these options to choose from – 1) Use the combination costly LPG and firewood, 2) Use only firewood and/or 3) Use illegal electricity for inefficient heating coils. Unfortunately, they are unaware about varieties of improved cookstoves, they haven’t heard of solar, biogas, biochar or pellet-based cooking.

Electric Cooking:

Most households have access to free (read illegal) electricity. They use inefficient induction coil cookstoves (non-standardised) for cooking or water heating whenever electricity is available. We were told that whenever continuous electricity is available, they use the coil cookstove.

1Source internet

Government policy	Impact on ground

End of Subsidy on Kerosene	Due to unavailability of kerosene people are using single use plastic for igniting firewood cookstoves

Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana	All households have LPG connection in this particular village

LPG price hike	Most people use LPG sparingly. They use firewood mostly for water heating.

Financial aspects:

Most improved cookstoves range between INR 1800 to INR 5000. Most people can afford these cookstoves but are not able to assign it as a priority spending/investment activity. Selecting a good cookstove and a clean fuel is not part of any discussion as it is not given due importance. Triggering such discussions to assign importance and ownership to clean fuels and clean cookstoves can play a pivotal role in increasing the adoption rates.

Conclusion:

The learnings from this demonstration establish the importance of outreach and customer education in this sector. Whether it is adoption of LPG, Electric cooking, Solar or Biogas fuel, giving the end users an opportunity to choose the best cookstoves after educating them shall help to bring some sustainable impact.

OrjaBox will aims to reach out to 10 village in the coming 8 to 10 months and give them a complete handholding for clean cooking. If you wish to associate with this activity in any capacity then do write to us on info@orjabox.com

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Clean Cooking With Indiahikes

admin — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 13:00:33 +0000

Have you ever been on a trek to high altitudes and wondered how to sustainably cook your meals at these altitudes? Well, OrjaBox and IndiaHikes successfully used solar cookers and biochar steam cookers at one high altitude location. This clean cooking demonstration was conducted from March 4^th to March 8^th , at Sari village in Uttarakhand, India.

Sari is a beautiful remote village is located at an altitude of 6400 ft situated in the northern state of Uttarakhand. The temperature during our tests varied from 1 ^oC in the morning to 18 ^oC throughout the day. We experienced heavy rains and thunderstorms on a couple of days of our experiment.

During the demonstration, we used a tube solar cooker, a box-type solar cooker, a panel cooker, and a couple of biochar-fuelled steam cookers. Over four days we could try various food items on these cookers. We cooked rice, dal, potatoes, roasting groundnuts, making jam from local fruits, boiling water, steaming vegetables, etc. The food got cooked, though it took a little longer time than it would have taken in the plains.

While we were exploring how best we can make use of these devices for trekking, we also ventured out in the village to find out local cooking practices. I was quite perplexed to see that though all the houses had LPG connections, they preferred using firewood. 100% of homes have open firewood chulhas. Shockingly they use “plastic” for igniting the firewood. They cook the afternoon meal using LPG while the morning and evening meals and water for bathing are heated on open firewood chulhas.

We conducted a clean cooking demonstration for the village women. These rural women instantly liked the concept of using solar energy and biochar for cooking. Clean cooking can reduce their workload, they said. The village women were inquisitive about the time required for cooking meals, how the cookers would perform when the weather changes, where to source the equipment from, the cost of the equipment, etc. Their questions revealed that they are really keen to try a solution that works to reduce the effort and cost of cooking.

It was indeed a splendid learning experience for me to conduct these demonstrations. We conducted these demonstrations for two equally important applications – sustainable trekking and access to clean cooking in rural areas. I am grateful to Indahikes for taking the lead for this cause. While exploring how to integrate clean cooking into their operations and also contributing to the villages. OrjaBox is committed to working with such visionary organizations.

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Sustainable Cooking – an imperative solution for the food security challenge

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 06:20:30 +0000

For thousands of years, cooking has been an integral part of our existence since we learned the application of fire. Over these countless years, cooking has evolved to define our culture, health, and agriculture. In this age of digitization and automation cooking remains one of our core activities -either as a food processing industry or restaurant or cloud kitchen or home cooking. Thus, cooking is a core activity of our existence. It is also one of the most effective ways to address climate change impacts related to food security, fuel availability, nutrition, water management, and agriculture. Cooking is central to numerous aspects of sustainability. It is one single human activity which gives a tremendous opportunity to every individual- rich or poor, educated or uneducated to contribute positively towards achieving sustainability.

Food Security Challenge:

Nearly 800[1] million people go hungry every day around the world, more than 2 billion lack the nutrients required for a healthy life, and one-third of the global population is expected to be overweight or obese by 2030, according to the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition. By 2050 the world population will rise to 9 billion people.

Here is a comprehensive picture of the challenge that we face regarding access to clean cooking.

Access to Clean Cooking

Climate change will make the task of feeding this large population challenging. Unpredictable droughts and floods, erratic temperature changes will largely impact agricultural produce.

With growing urbanization, arable land will reduce largely. Increased air, water, and soil pollution will adversely impact the quality and quantity of arable land.

Cooking is an important decision-making step between the production and consumption of food. This important step can help us address the food security challenge.

The following elements of sustainable cooking help us to address climate change with our individual efforts. When each one who cooks and consumes food, consciously integrates these elements then collectively we can address one of the most urgent challenges i.e Food Security.

· Giving preference to green fuels like bioenergy and solar energy for cooking, drying, and even cooling whenever possible.
· Selection of efficient cookstoves as per buying capacity
· Keeping the right balance between plant-based and animal-based diet. Overindulgence of both or total abstinence from either would have impending consequences on food availability and health.
· Using as many as locally grown food ingredients. The travel and growth emissions of food ingredients have to be minimum. Growing a few vegetables and fruits would be an added advantage considering the health and hygiene aspects as well.
· Cooking traditional and seasonal cuisines is an important step towards reducing storage and preservation-related energy emissions.
· Keeping a check on food wastage is quantitatively the most impactful ways of addressing the food security challenge. Processing leftovers by composting or converting into new dishes is one effective way everyone can contribute towards this step. Sharing food and food ingredients will be an added advantage.
· Judiciously use the ready to eat and ready to cook food items, while keeping a check on the food budget and consumption balance.

Let us start our sustainable cooking journey by integrating these elements into our cooking styles. Write to us at pournima@samuchit.com for more information on sustainable cooking activities.

https://samuchitenvirotech.blogspot.com/2020/11/sustainable-cooking-imperative-solution.html

[1] Source: https://intelligence.weforum.org/topics/a1Gb0000000pTDPEA2?tab=publications

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Video Series -Fuels Used in Indian Kitchens

admin — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 05:50:15 +0000

OrjaBox presents a video series on – Cooking Fuels in Indian Kitchens. This video captures various cooking fuels used in rural and urban kitchens, the cost of fuels, and access to fuels. This video series gives insights about the needs and following action points for making cooking sustainable in rural and urban areas.

Designing good financing solutions along with impactful awareness will result in wider adoption of green fuels in rural and urban households.

OjaBox invites CSR partners, NGOs, educational and skilling institutes to implement sustainable cooking projects. OrjaBox sustainable cooking projects include:1) Setting up OrjaBox stations 2) Conducting awareness and demonstrations3) Onfield research needs assessment, developing financing models for clean cooking

With these initiatives, we address the following Sustainability Development Goals:

For more information about partnering with OrjaBox write to us at info@orjabox.com

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Event – Session On Renewable Energy Basics

admin — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 08:08:08 +0000

Happy to present an exciting session on Renewable Energy Basics for students of class 8th – class 10th. Registration link: https://forms.gle/fYX6CowZnQ9Dwdfq5 For queries write to info@orjabox.com

For more activities do check our Gallery Page

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Sustainable Cooking-Fuel and Stove Selection

admin — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 07:45:26 +0000

Our survey revealed that most of our respondents use gas and electricity for cooking. Very few people have access to solar cooking, biogas, and improved biomass cookstoves for cooking.

Fuel selection and stove selection have a considerable impact on the cooking budget of families as well as on the environment. Approximately 50% -60% of the household energy goes into cooking, water heating, and freezing devices. Ideally, everyone should have access to affordable and healthy cooking resources. However, there are numerous barriers that impact access to proper cooking facilities. This in turn contributes to malnourishment, overspending on cooking, food wastage, etc.

Factors that influence fuel and stove selection are:

Capital investment: This factor is closely linked to financial capability. Eg. Many poor families cannot invest in cooking equipment while affluent families have multiple cooking devices.
Space: The space factor mostly applies to renewable energy cooking devices like biogas and solar cookers. Many urban households do not have enough space and renewable resources to make clean cooking choices. In rural areas, capital investment is the main barrier for clean cooking.
Time: Many urban and rural families consider the time for cooking to be an important factor in fuel and stove selection. In rural areas, gathering fuelwood is the most time-consuming activity and hence they would readily switch to a time-saving fuel and stove, provided that is affordable. In urban households multiple time-efficient cooking devices are preferred which can cook dishes parallelly.
Fuel availability: Many rural households do not have access to LPG/PNG. Hence, they have to spend time and effort in gathering fuelwood. In urban areas, enough sunlight is not available in many apartments which restrict the use of clean solar cooking devices. Hence, in urban areas, LPG/PNG and electricity are the default choices for cooking devices.

Access to healthy and affordable cooking devices will help us to address multiple challenges like indoor air pollution, environmental pollution, malnourishment, growing costs of food, expenditure on health, etc. Shifting to clean cooking requires us to act on the following:

Shared cooking facilities: Both in urban and rural areas shared clean cooking facilities that have multiple cooking devices can be costly and time-efficient solutions. Subscribed users can use these facilities at affordable costs and reduce the carbon footprint of cooking. A kitchen library experiment can be a good starting point.
Financing schemes: Innovative financing mechanisms are very crucial for the adoption of clean cooking, especially for the deprived sections of society.
Donating and gifting cooking equipment: Consciously donating and gifting cooking equipment help to ensure sustainability. GE has designed an appliance donation program.

Fuel and stove selection for cooking are important aspects of sustainable cooking. With a smart, innovative approach towards sustainable cooking, we have the potential to move up the energy ladder towards cleaner solutions.

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