Hello! Last week, while browsing through Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform, I came across a technology that could revolutionize the planet with more trees.
Amidst the terrible news we’ve been hearing about forest fires, this came to me like a ray of hope. As I read more about the concept, I came to know about more projects in the sustainability space. Today, I’ll be sharing these with you.
What is Kickstarter? Kickstarter allows customers like you and me to fund innovative projects around art, science, and tech before they are actually created. In return, creators promise you something in return if the project ever comes to fruition.
Tech for trees
You press a few buttons, a machine flies out of your eye’s reach, fires hundreds of seeds into open land and comes back. A few months later, you find out that the seeds have germinated and are growing into trees slowly and steadily.
Sounds like a movie?
It is real.
I came across the Flash Forest project this week, whose goal is to plant 1 billion trees by 2030. The project is made possible by a drone technology that fires rapidly germinating seeds into the soil. The benefit - we are able to scale up plantation of trees much faster, way beyond human capability.
With a single drone, the company can plant 20,000 trees per day.
The project started in early 2019 and has already met its crowdfunding goal.
Let’s zoom into their methodology of planting trees and recognize the potential impact it can have on the world -
The Flash Forest project has combined the benefits of drone technology with modern biological science to make this possible. They have their proprietary pods that are filled with seeds. Once fired into the earth, the seeds sprout fast as a result of the nutrients and fertilizers present in the pod.
What’s interesting is that drones can actually be used not just to fire the seeds, but also to monitor the growth of trees, and ensure that the germinating plants don’t die a premature death.
They currently pledge to plant 1 tree for every $1 donated, and within 3 years, they will be able to plant trees at 50 cents per tree. From a business standpoint, geo-engineering and ecology are very interesting businesses to get into right now.
After reading up about this project, a friend also recommended watching this Vice documentary on Geo-engineering.
Geo-environmental engineering
This is a new field of research and engineering, which encompasses environmental and geotechnical engineering to come up with innovative solutions to sustain our planet.
The documentary mentions three projects, which are all very interesting. For example, there is this project in British Columbia, Canada, which is basically a huge cooling tower, which has large fans that pull in Carbon Dioxide from the air and store it in a bed under the surface of the earth.
Think about it - the amount of Carbon Dioxide we put in the air (by burning fossil fuels) can be sucked out of the air. Then, this same Carbon Dioxide can be mixed with Hydrogen and Water to make fuels that can then power our vehicles.
The makers of this fuel claim that our current cars can use this fuel! Thus, the costs of switching are not very high, as is the case with electric vehicles or hydrogen-powered vehicles.
The proof of concept is working, and the team behind this innovation is ready to scale it to the rest of the world. Though it will take time (maybe a few decades) for them to scale this out, at least there is potential.
I highly recommend watching the documentary here.
Other related readings
While reading up about geoengineering and forest plantations, I came across a handful of other links that are interesting -
Tree plantation has mind-blowing potential to tackle climate change - link
Grow-trees.com is a company that allows individuals to buy subscriptions to plant trees for them, or helps companies with their corporate social responsibility initiatives - link
India has pledged to have trees cover at least one-third of its land area, but its efforts are complicated by its population and rapid industrialization - link.
I’d love your feedback about this email. Please fill out this 2-minute survey.
I will be publishing a series of short stories around entrepreneurship starting Jan 31st. I’ll be sending a short story every 2 weeks. Take a look and let me know what you think!
📢Finally, my book, The Advisory Board, is free for download on Amazon Kindle for 6 more days. Download now!📢
Thanks for reading :)
Hemant