Refrigeration Without the Refrigerator

I read about a device that a young British woman purportedly recently invented. There was a link to it on a favourite French language blog of mine. You basically stick a metal cylinder inside another sort of cylinder, fill the gap between them with sand and wet that sand, and the water's evaporation (from the sun) keeps the inside cylinder cold enough to hold perishables for several days. All you need to do to keep it going is add more water to the sand. You can read the original piece about it in the Daily Mail here.

The thing is that this is far from being some revolutionary invention. Zeer pots have been around for a while and use the same passive cooling process using two pots. I looked for them here on the amazing AfriGadget website (you wanna talk about innovation and sustainability -- check them out) but couldn't find them. Mohammed Bah Abba, a Nigerian teacher, has been credited with their invention on numerous websites.