Ladies and Gents, Start Your Cardboard Engines!

We’ve all had a few extra cardboard boxes lying around our garages or attics at one time or another, following a move or a failed spring cleaning attempt.

While recycling of cardboard is commonplace for most us – in fact 78.3 percent of all corrugated cardboard was recovered for recycling in 2007 – it can be fun to find different and creative uses for that cardboard before it makes that trip to the recycler.

Cardboard Car Derby

Arkansas’ EcoFest 2009 will feature its inaugural cardboard car derby, the “EcoFest Grand Prix (Formula EGP),” on Sept. 12. The intent of the race is “to promote engineering skills and alternative energy as well as demonstrate the intrinsic worth of discarded materials.”

The Derby hopes to inspire participants to create “something built from nothing,” requiring all entries to be built for less than $100. Teams will be required to show photo documentation of how the cardboard car was constructed.

The summer is also a popular time for cardboard regatta races, which feature boats crafted solely of cardboard.

Eco-Friendly Oven

Inventor Jon Bohmer may have accidentally solved a common problem facing developing nations: the availability of firewood to heat and cook food. As CNN recently reported, Bohmer set out to work on a simple project with his daughters when they came up with the eco-friendly oven design.

The simple design utilizes two cardboard boxes, one placed inside the other, and an acrylic cover to trap the sun’s rays. The inner box is painted black, and the outer is covered in foil, causing the concentration of heat from the rays inside to be hot enough to cook food and even boil water.

Bohmer’s “Kyoto Box” won the FT Climate Change Challenge, which aims to find the most innovative solution to the effects of climate change. The solar-powered cardboard cooker is estimated to prevent two tons of carbon dioxide emissions per family per year in rural Africa.