A Seed Investment in the Future
- Lorenzo Sacchetti
- Jan 25, 2021
- 3 min read
Exactly a year ago, on April 25th 2020, I launched Green Mirror, aiming at giving those innovative startups or other organizations that help make some parts of our life more sustainable, a platform. One of these stories that gave me the idea for my blog in the first place is Treeo, which I also wrote the first article about. Treeo is an app that helps farmers track their reforestation efforts to give them an overview of their trees as well as providing them with expertise to use those resources in the best possible way, both from an economic perspective, as well naturally from a sustainable one. That is why for this "anniversary post" I have chosen another digital innovator active in the reforestation sector: Land Life Company.
If you want to learn more about why reforestation, meaning planting trees, is one of the most popular actions to deal with climate change, check out other posts like the one on Ecosia. But back to today's protagonist. Land Life Company conducts "technology-driven reforestation at scale", meaning they restore degraded land and plant trees to reduce their customers' carbon footprint. To achieve their mission to help restore the 2 billion hectares of degraded land worldwide, they apply data and technology, such as drones, artificial intelligence and monitoring applications, to every step of the planting process. Planting trees where it is needed most, Land Life Company’s projects revitalize important ecosystems, improve biodiversity and create social and economic benefits to local communities. Prominent customers like ABN AMRO Bank or BOSCH are already supporting them, but this year Zalando announced they too would be planting trees with Land Life Company to reduce their carbon footprint.
Their project overview webpage has an overview of the projects they manage all over the world, with a short explanation on why that location was chosen. Reforestation in Spain for example is important because of the rapid desertification that happens there. On the other hand, planting trees in the Al Alagaya Refugee Camp in Sudan especially aims at creating employment and training for refugees while also providing shade and cleaner air. Those are amazing projects, but it is hardly something new or unique. How Land Life Company aims to set itself apart from others is through its "high-tech approach to smart reforestation". So what concrete part does technology play in their projects?
With each new plot, their tech team assesses the land and the ecological situation extensively. This is combined with drone-based terrain analyses and information gathered from local landowners to create a detailed planting blueprint. This blueprint allows the trees to be planted efficiently and optimizing climate impact. Land Life Company has developed technologies that allowing them to reforest hundreds of hectares in a single planting session, including a GPS enabled automated-planting system to drive speed and efficiency in the field. Land Life Company is also currently developing new technologies that will be launched over the coming year. Once the trees have gone in the ground, Land Life Company’s work continues. On-the-ground and remote sensing technologies are used to track the impact of reforestation over time. The location, species, vigor and other vital statistics of the trees are also monitored closely —this is done through the Land Life Company monitoring app. Once the trees are over a meter in height, drones are used, along with machine learning algorithms, to geolocate the trees and monitor their growth and survival. When the trees are over five years old, satellites take over the monitoring. All of the data is stored in a database, which is used for further analyses and creating a continuous feedback loop.
What is the impact of this?
Sequestering CO2 out of the atmosphere: to date, almost 600.000 tons have been reached.
Positive social and environmental impact of local communities by providing more jobs through the more than 2.6 million trees already planted.
Rebuilding biodiversity and habitat for endangered species by to date restoring more than 2.800 acres of land.
Check out Land Life's impact video from 2020:
What can you do?
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