michelle kaufmann designs

Earth Day is traditionally a day for celebrating the environment and taking action on its behalf. This can mean anything from taking part in a local beach or park clean up, planting a tree, taking your bike to work, or any number of other eco-friendly activities and projects. Earth Day is also a time to be inspired through others by learning more about what they’re doing to save this world. This week I was lucky enough to experience that sort of inspiration when I met Chris Hornor.

Chris is the Founder & CEO of Better Energy Systems, the company that makes the Solio, a pocket-size mobile solar charger that can power up anything from cell phones to mp3 players to digital cameras. What impresses me most about Chris’ environmental philosophy is that it doesn’t have to do with just saving the planet, but also has a lot to do with helping the people who live on it.

The Solio is what Chris sees as a “Trojan horse” for the renewable energy market since it literally puts the power of solar energy in the palm of the average consumer’s hand where it can open their lives and minds to its enormous potential. But when Chris talks about the impact of the Solio, what excites him it’s not just the fact that it makes tapping solar power easier for people. It’s also the fact that it’s making renewable energy accessible to people in places where there is not much in the way of viable alternatives. In places like Sub-Saharan Africa where there’s an abundance of sunshine, but an appalling lack of infrastructure for supplying power to the vast majority of the population, devices like the Solio can make a substantial impact.

It may sound strange, but cell phones are changing the face of Sub-Saharan Africa for the better. For the first time, millions of African have access to a means of communication other than the time consuming and costly method of traveling to deliver messages in person. The continent is covered in tiny wooden shacks, wired for power so that rural residents without electricity on their own land can charge their mobile phones for a small fee. With access to compact solar technology like the Solio, many Africans could spend even less time and money in order to communicate with each other and the outside world, further growing their ability to rise out of poverty. Applied to the most time consuming of daily tasks in these rural communities (like cooking, since women typically spend all day scavenging for firewood over which to prepare meals) solar power is a hugely powerful tool for combating the endemic poverty that persist among the people there - the time savings it offers can be invested in activity that will generate income for their families.

Chris’ company stands on the belief that “all people – regardless of geography or economic standing - are entitled to clean energy and light.” That’s why they’re engaged in finding new ways to bring sustainable power and light to people at the bottom of the economic pyramid. The potential benefit of democratizing access to clean, renewable energy within developing nations is tremendous, in both environmental and social terms.

As more and more reports are published each year warning that the people most affected by global warming are those living in under developed regions, whose poverty will only be worsened as a result of climate change, it may be time to start looking at Earth Day in a new way. Perhaps we can start thinking like Chris does, not just about the local impact of our efforts at being more eco-friendly, but also our ability to positively impact the lives of people around the world through better environmental stewardship.