Startup Aims To Plant 1 Billion Trees A Year Using Drones

Technology has given way to plenty of near-miraculous events and it is about to add yet another. A new startup aims to reverse deforestation by planting 1 billion trees a year. It plans to do this by making use of drones, which are becoming more sophisticated and convenient. By doing so, the startup can replace the millions of acres of forest that humanity has destroyed over the last century.

As Digital Trends reports, the planet lost about 32 million acres of forested land between 2000 and 2009. That’s a rate of deforestation that humans will find virtually impossible to reverse considering the current situation. As a result, carbon dioxide stays in the air and builds up in presence because there are fewer and fewer trees to turn the gas into oxygen.

Fortunately, there are companies like BioCarbon that are trying to find solutions to the issue and have developed new drone technology to help fight deforestation. According to the company, its drones can plant about 100,000 seedlings per day, and that’s for every drone. By utilizing about 60 teams with their own respective drones, the company believes that it can achieve 100 billion trees every year.

One of the people responsible for the new technology is the Australian engineer, Dr. Susan Graham, Futurism reports. She was one of the scientists who developed the capabilities of the drones to plant seedlings at a pace that humans could never cope.

Basically, the setup is a dual drone system. One drone scans a particular area to create a 3D map and therefore identify which sectors are ideal for planting. The second drone will then take 150 seed pods to these areas, where it will proceed to shoot the pods into the earth for planting. According to one of the engineers at BioCarbon, Lauren Fletcher, the drones are capable of firing one seed pod a second.

“We’re firing at one a second, which means a pair of operators will be able to plant nearly 100,000 trees per day — 60 teams like this will get us to a billion trees a year,” Fletcher said.