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The Sewing Rooms presents The Sew Fab Thermal Cooking Bag – a product that helps us in the fight against fuel poverty and climate change
The Sewing Rooms have designed and are manufacturing The Sew Fab Thermal Cooking Bag which reduces the amount of cooking fuel consumption by up to 70% with the potential to save hundreds of pounds per year. The SewFab thermal cooking bag is inspired by medieval ways of cooking, the straw and haybox method as well as third world versions.
The fact is, we use our ovens to cook casseroles for 3 or 4 hrs a time not realising that ovens are among the most energy-demanding appliances in our homes. Aside from our fridge, the oven is likely responsible for the highest energy consumption out of all our kitchen appliances.
Lots of us are feeling the pinch and having to make choices about where we can save money. Some of us have tougher choices to make than others. The elderly and food bank users, already experiencing hardship, are finding that this latest hike in living costs is forcing them into fuel poverty and into impossible living conditions. And we at the Sewing Rooms wanted to be part of the solution.
As Iceland’s managing director, Richard Walker reports: “It’s incredibly concerning. We’re hearing of some food bank users declining potatoes and root veg because they can’t afford the energy to boil them.” To hear that those people already struggling to feed their families sufficiently are now unable to heat the little fresh food that they do have access to, is heart breaking.
We hope through this campaign to raise a minimum of £5000 to help us to distribute The Sew Fab Thermal Cooking Bag to Food Banks and community initiatives across the country we need your help to reach this goal. The more successful we are the more SewFab Thermal cooking bags we can gift to our most struggling communities.
How does The Sew Fab Thermal Cooking Bag reduce fuel costs?
The thermal bag is based on medieval methods of cooking and more recently “Haybox Cooking”; a process which has been developed over the years and now, here in Skelmersdale, we have produced our own modern, portable, washable version. By choosing The Sew Fab Thermal Cooking Bag over your usual oven method, you can reduce cooking fuel consumption by up to 70% per meal, saving on average 1 ton of carbon emissions per year (based on twice weekly usage)
We estimate that 1 family using this cooking method wice a week can save on average £6 per week on fuel costs, that’s a saving of around £312 per year.
A family using this method 4 times a week can save around £12 per week with an estimate saving of £624 per year
That also a saving of 2 ton of carbon a year*.
| Oven cost per hr | Times per wk using oven | 3.5 hr oven usage cost | Cost of fuel oven use over the year | times per wk using sewfab bag | Cost Saving on fuel per week | Cost saving on fuel per year |
| 61p | 1 | £2.14 | £111.28 | 1 | £2.14 | £111.28 |
| 61p | 2 | £4.28 | £222.56 | 2 | £4.28 | £222.56 |
| 61p | 3 | £6.42 | £333.84 | 3 | £6.42 | £333.84 |
| 61p | 4 | £8.56 | £445.12 | 4 | £8.56 | £445.12 |
| 61p | 5 | £10.70 | £556.40 | 5 | £10.70 | £556.40 |
| 61p | 6 | £12.84 | £667.68 | 6 | £12.84 | £667.68 |
| 61p | 7 | £14.98 | £778.96 | 7 | £14.98 | £778.96 |
So, How does it work?
This short video explains how the Sew Fab Thermal Cooking Bag works:
What is it Made of? Environmental impact
The Sew Fab Thermal bag will use unwanted rolls/roll ends of textiles which are gifted to us by Lancashire based companies, The Senator Group and Panaz Fabrics. Their help and support is invaluable as we will repurpose this fabric for the thermal bag, in addition we will be using their offcuts/scrap pieces of foam/textiles/polyester, which we shred to create a hybrid filling for the thermal insulation. Each Sew Fab Thermal Cooking Bag saves approximately 6 kg. of materials from going to waste.
Support the Crowdfunder!
CEO and co founder Paula Gamester explains:
“So many people are facing difficulties and hardship, and we at the Sewing Rooms wanted to be part of the solution so we did some research and designed the SewFab thermal cooking bag. We have launched a crowdfunder https://crowdfunder.co.uk/p/sewfab-bag our target is £5000, however the more we raise the more people we can help.
