TEMPERATURE bags have been around for a while and they are still a source of excitement.
Temp-bags are a green-technology designed to reduce humanity’s carbon-footprint.
Temp-bags are bags designed for foods to be put in them and cooked over time.
Ropafadzo Gororo manufactures these bags that come in all shapes and sizes.
Gororo demonstrated how the bags work by boiling 1kg of rice for seven minutes on the stove and then transferring the pot into the temp-bag.
The pot was left for an hour in the tightly sealed bag, after which the rice was cooked.
The process clearly saves electricity and is a smart technology.
Generally, the ‘temp-bags’ or ‘wonder bags’, as satisfied customers call them, have not disappointed.
It is not really known where these bags originated from, but search on google leads to a story about a woman who invented an insulated pizza delivery bag.
Ingrid Kosar always dreamt about running her own business.
She didn’t know what kind of company it would be, but she liked to picture herself carrying a little briefcase.
Kosar then invented the temp-bag.
“There is a need in certain fields for soft-sided thermally insulated carrying cases,” reads Kosar’s patent from 1984, one of three that she earned.
“One particular application is the ready-to-eat pizza field, where hot pies are packaged in rectangular cardboard cartons and delivered several cartons at a time to customers’ homes or offices.”
Kosar’s signature bags, which are sewn in the company’s workshop by a husband and wife team, sandwich a layer of food-safe polyester insulation between
1 000-deniercordura nylon on the outside and a slightly thinner nylon interior lining.
The triple function of the temperature bag makes it function as a cooker, warmer and cooler.
The local temp-bag is a heat retention slow cooker which allows foods that have been brought to a boil for a minimal stipulated time, on the stove or any other fuel source, to continue cooking for several hours after being removed from the fuel source and put into the bag.
It can keep foods which have been placed in the bag while hot at the same temperature for several hours.
Apart from that, it serves as a cooler by systematically retaining the coldness of cold beverages or frozen foods.
Gororo, who manufactures the bags, said they have a massive potential when it comes to energy saving as well as serving those communities that had difficulties in accessing firewood.
The product, she said, was transforming lives as well as increasing efficiency in homes.
“Going green should not be just buzzwords, it is time that we begin to take action and find solutions to protecting our environments and our forests by adopting technologies that do no harm,” said Gororo.
“If we are serious about protecting the environment for future generations, then we must act and do something about it and this is my small way of contributing to the protection of our environment.”
She said the bag underwent several production phases before she came up, in partnership with a colleague, with a plan that worked.
“The project first saw me and my colleague working on cotton material which we later discovered was not ideal,” said Gororo.
“We then decided to include canvas material which worked and also made the temp-bags ideal for outdoors.”
The country has, in recent years, suffered from deforestation as people resort to wood fuel for cooking and lately to cure tobacco.
According to FAO, 40 percent or about 15 624 000 hacters of Zimbabwe is forested and of this 5,1 percent ( 801 000 hacters) is classified as primary forest, the most biodiverse and carbon-dense form of forest.
It also states that the country has 108 000 hacters of planted forest. 
But between 1990 and 2010, the nation lost an average of 327 000 ha or 1,48 percent per year of forest.
Zimbabwe’s forests contain 492 million metric tonnes of carbon in living forest biomass. The country has some 1 103 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles, according to figures from the World Conservation Monitoring Centre.
Of these, 0,9 percent are endemic, meaning they exist in no other country, and 2,2 percent are threatened.
The country is also home to at least 4 440 species of vascular plants, of which 2,1 percent are endemic.
Environmental Management Agency’s (EMA) Steady Kangata said if more people and communities could come up with such initiatives, there would be a major positive impact on the ecological footprint.
“The temperature bag is a good initiative which, if implemented on a larger scale, would do away with things like kaylites which have become a menace in our society. We would like to encourage more communities to come up with initiatives that give solutions to energy defficiencies,” said Kangata.
“This technology saves energy by reducing pressure on the grid, which means less pollution as less fossil fuels are burnt. In the process we reduce our ecological footprint.”
Forestry Commission’s public relations manager, Violet Makoto hailed the innovation.
“As Forestry Commission, we support such initiatives that assist in curbing the alarming rate of deforestation in the country. This temperature bag can be widely used as a means to lessen pressure on forests but this can only happen when communities have easy access to it,” Makoto said.
“About 54 percent of Zimbabwe’s population uses wood fuel as a primary source of energy and this is part of the population that we need to reach out to with such technologies, otherwise they only become additional gadgets in the homes of people who have other sources of energy like solar or gas.
“We envisage a scenario in which different stakeholders come in and assist in rolling out such technologies in a community that 100 percent relies on firewood for energy. This can provide us with a platform to measure impact,” said Makoto.