Filo & Fibra revived wool-lined cooking boxes in Tuscany to cut households' gas use

NPR reported in December 2022 from San Casciano dei Bagni, Tuscany, where the nonprofit cooperative Filo & Fibra, meaning thread and fibre, makes insulated cooking boxes. Co-founder Gloria Lucchesi had found her grandmother's 1941 booklet on saving energy, which described a wooden cooking box lined with straw. The cooperative realised it could use local wool instead; sheep around the village are raised for meat and their fleece is of poor quality.

Two types are made, wood and felt, some with designer cotton exteriors, each with a thick wool lining. The cook boils the ingredients in an ordinary pot on the stove for perhaps 10 to 20 minutes, then puts the hot pot into the box, where cooking continues slowly for several hours. Filo & Fibra projects that a family using a box 20 to 30 hours a month will save up to $52 a year on gas. Lucchesi's husband, an economist, notes it frees cooks from the stove.

Chef Tiziana Tacchi, who owns two boxes and plans more, said results were better; chef Adio Provvedi tried it for a peposo beef stew.

Swap the 1941 booklet's straw lining for local wool to make insulated boxes that finish the cooking after a short boil.

Wool insulates well and the cooperative could source it locally from sheep whose fleece had little other use.

The pot is heated only at the start, so most cooking uses no gas.

Slow, enclosed cooking keeps steam in, which chefs said improved the food.

Cooks can leave the pot and do other things.

Old thrift technology can be revived by swapping its inputs for a local waste material, with modern design on the outside.

As of the report, about 100 units had sold, with a wooden box costing up to $250, about the price of a decent microwave in Italy. The boxes were shown at Slow Food's Salon of Taste in Turin in September 2022, and some restaurants had placed orders. The $52 saving is the cooperative's own projection; no independent measurement was reported.