Although it does require initial watering, it still beats traditional irrigation, particularly in areas that are hard to reach. Richard Dale, executive director at the Sonoma Ecology Center, is planning to use the boxes along to replant the banks along Sonoma Creek. "Restoration can be challenging here because you have to get through the long, dry, Mediterranean summer," he said. "This could really transform the way restoration is done in arid regions."
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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21 Comments
Add CommentBravo... Sometimes it is good to think "inside the box"... ;-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSilly and pointless. Reforesting an area 2.5 times the size of canada, good luck with that, once a forest is gon its gone and it takes millenia to go back to the way it was or simply turns to desert.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEither way, tossing hundreds of thousands of plastic containers outthere is only gonna make things worse.
Yeah, a bunch of non-biodegradable polypropylene boxes at $27.50 ea. sound like good business! If the reforestation doesn't work you've go a brand new garbage dump!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou guys really should learn to read correctly. The article clearly state that the boxes are reused once the roots are deep enough to get to the underground moisture. They will also make bio-degradable boxes for those hard to reach areas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"gunslingor", you are a damn idiot! This man should get some kind of a Nobel Prize for this simple idea. The best ideas come from good people, like this man, who can concentrate on one subject until they get it right. That container can be made from recycled plastic and used thousands of times. Areas that have been devastated by fossil fuel extraction can be replanted in a fraction of the time by putting super nutrients in the box with the plant where it may be able to survive until the nutrients can be built back up in the soil enough to keep it alive for at least fifty years. As it stands now, it takes three to five hundred years for the soil, on stripped land, to build its nutrients up to keep a native hardwood alive long enough for it to mature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have one word for this good man.... Brovo!!!
Siriusofdelf - Thanks for pointing out my error - I did miss the retrieval 'plan'. I stand corrected, as long as they are actually retrieved in practice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBiodegradable makes more sense to me, but then I think the Dutch government has close ties with Shell oil...
A great proof of principal would be to halt and eventually reverse an expanding desert. Perhaps they can restore the fertile crescent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is much merit in this simple idea. It seems like the greatest resistance isn't from those that think that claims of catastrophic global warming is a hoax but from those who are somehow convinced that the only way to be politically correct in addressing what they fear, or rather suspect, is by parroting the demands of the powerful elite of the financial and political world who are seeking some sort of constriction on the industrial economy as a form of punishment for the industrially developed nations' having being successful, and by redistributing the world's wealth to make up for past environmental sins.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hope this idea of using simple devices reasonably applied will be attempted and if proved to be applicable are used where appropriate and sensible, and in the mean time I hope that the truly noxious emissions such as carbon soot and heavy metals that are not disputed by anyone as being detrimental to the environmental health of our living systems continue to be reduced by improved efficiencies and new technologies while keeping our world's industrial economy strong and productive so that the poor have incentive to work towards a day when we all have a vested interest in a clean, sustainable, stable and productive civilization.
I will delay any comment until the success or otherwise of this idea is known after it has been used for a year or two.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt will be wonderful if this device catching 3" of rain a year can enable a tree/plant to grow that would not otherwise grow.
From the early days in the semi arid regions of India afforestation programs or greening programs or planting avenue trees pursued a similar technology with cent percent success. It is practiced with more vigour these days. A two gallon or so sized fired mud pot with small neck and having a tight fitting wick sealing a 6or 8 mm hole crafted carefully at the bottom of the pot is buried neck deep near the sapling. Pot is filled with water which drip irrigates the plant through the wick enables the sapling to establish,.By the rainy season the plant would have established well in the soil that the pot will be removed for reuse. Burrying, filling with water and removing etc are easily affordable in the Indian nation with so much of hands looking for work. (thrivikramji@gmail.com)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(posted to pikk) Smart or Dumb? The WaterBox is a device that can help reforrest the world? [POLL] - http://www.pikk.com/f5bf4
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd like to know what he means by "I think it's a disaster that the only people who know how to weave clothing are in China," Seems to me that, that skips over the rest of the third world weaving population, not to mention Africa. Perhaps there is something complex about the cloth?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPolypropylene is made from oil.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's fun to watch environmentalist heads explode.
Unintended consequences? What about mosquitoes breeding inside the box?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd it's just a box of rain,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know who put it there.
Believe it if you need it,
Or leave it if you dare...
Great idea,but just how do you get the plant loose from the box so you can reuse it?I saw no place where the box can break in two for this purpose>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI gather the main idea here is to meter the water out slowly so it will last longer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere are a couple of other ideas along these line. I was raised on small farms, but never much of a farmer. But last year, mainly as an experiment, I bought one apple and one plum seedling and planted them as 'outlaws' in the wilds of a local park. I was told that at least in this area, each young tree should have about five gallons of water a week until they were big enough to reach ground water, perhaps supplied by putting a hole in the bottom of a paint bucket and a nail in the hole while carrying. (I'd think it would need at least a smaller nail while in place to slow the flow rate.) But I'm obviously more of a minimalist, and I didn't want it to be too obvious. So I dug a hole next to the tree, put a plastic grocery bag in the hole, filled it with water, punched a small hole in the bottom, hid the bag somewhat with leaves and refilled it now and then. This year, wanting to encourage the roots to grow deeper, I put a piece of wire bicycle spoke through a long hollow coffee stirrer, punched a hole through the bag and well into the dirt to conduct the water deeper and removed the wire. The trouble was, I waited till the dirt was pretty dry and the stirrer was hard to drive in very far. Also it will leak water directly from the bag. Next time I go out I'll first tape the bag to the stirrer, and the dirt will be more moist. (Since last year, something ate almost all the apple tree, but a small branch is starting over. It may need some protection for a while.)
Dear all
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as I read comments on the box I see that there is some confusion on the costs. For professional users the box is 6 euro. You can plant during 10 years each year one tree. This is 60 cents per tree. In countries with 2 rainseasons one can plant two trees per year so that the costs of planting reduce to 30 cents. Instead of trees or saplings it is also possible to copy nature. Nature doesn't plant trees but seeds. If you plant seeds instead of saplings the costprice of the planting material is almost zero which makes the use of the waterboxx almost cost neutral. This year we're also going to do experiments with mais to sow it in the box and help it only one month during germination. You can sow 4 seeds and do that - between the tropics - 12 times per year. This means that one can plant 48 plants during 10 years = 480 plants with one box. That means that - if the experiments are successfull - I developed a way for poor people to sow their mais and have a 100% planting result for less than 2 cents per plant and a reduced water use of at least 90%. Most of the water gets lost in the first month after sowing while giving water with baskets is very bad for the germination and the oxygen in the soil. If you want to read about costs and profits, please read groasis.com/page/uk/business.php as it will help preventing nonsens that 1 boxe costs 27,50 euro which is only the experimental price during this year when I want to help people who also want to do some experiments with it. I hope you are all exited as I am and hope that this further explanation helps to get better understandings.
kind regards
Pieter Hoff, the inventor
I seldom read a whole article, but in this case I read every word and I want more details. We are reforesting in the Philippines and our limitation is lack of water three months of each year. I need more details. Does one box service only one tree at a time? We need to plant 160,000 seedlings and we are now looking at a water well farm. However, your method may be a better way to go. Sure would like to hear from you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHas anyone heard of DRiWATER? It is a much less expensive solution and much simpler and has been around for 20 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHas anyone heard of DRiWATER? It is a much better solution at about 15% of the cost. It is a product that has been around for 20 years.
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