Isn’t spirulina more effective for capturing carbon than trees? And also you can eat it in the way you don’t normally eat trees? Trees are great and all but why do you want me to be angry about algae?
I think it’s probably cheaper in the long run to self host a tree instead, unless you live in an apartment with absolutely no green space. But I’d rather get a VPF and host a tree there if I had too
I'm purposefully growing duckweed on my balcony.
I'm doing !hydroponics@slrpnk.net, and by doing that, I have lots of waste water with still good fertilizer in it.
Duckweed is one of the fastest growing, nutrient densest and least demanding plant out there, and you can just scoop it out with a strainer.
It's exponentially growing and if you don't wanna eat it, it makes great organic fertiliser or animal feed with lots of protein and micronutients!
TL;DR: it's 10-50x more efficient at cleaning the air and actually generates both electricity and fertiliser.
Yes, it would be better to just get rid of all the cars generating the pollution in the first place and putting in some more trees, but there are clear advantages to this.
Short answer: the bank won't give your shiny new tree-planting business a loan as easily as it will to a "liquid tank tree replacement" one.
Long answer:
Trees take time to grow
Trees need to be planted
Trees make shade
Animals like birds and insects like bees and mosquitos like to live next to them
Trees don't need electricity
Trees take in heat radiated from the pavement
Trees don't look cool
While algae are more efficient at turning CO2 into oxygen in theory, in practice algae don't have a good climate in such a tank (no oxygen without ventilation, i.e. constant electricity and they get cooked through the glass).
iirc, algae are better oxygen producers per units of mass and volume, so a tank full of algae might actually be better than a tree. One issue though is that trees can grow on open ground, while algae require a tank to be built, most likely negating the economic benefits. Also, trees are more aesthetically pleasing.
I don’t think anything’s wrong with trees, but maybe we could also have some of these as well as trees ?
Replace the advertisements on bus stops with a really cool green liquid wall 😮 (but they’d have to make the glass super thick, these things tend to be vandalized from time to time)
@ECEC Good lord the number of replies here from people whose brains have been destroyed by "planners"...
Trees lower the urban heat island effect.
There's plenty of room for trees in dense places, so long as "density" means efficient housing and efficient transportation rather than parking lots and stroads and single-family homes.
Someone said "trees require maintenance", as if asphalt & pretty much everything doesn't require maintenance?
A big problem with trees is roots, especially in cities with dense underground infrastructure. If there’s an actual way to produce the same amount of oxygen as a tree in a smaller space, I’m all for it. I’m honestly okay with how these look, assuming low maintenance.
Yeah, those are going to last at -40F/-40C nights we often experience where I live. Nor do I see them being able to add any cool relief from their shade on a hot day.
That said, it is hard to grow healthy trees in the poisoned soils of a big city. They tend to struggle and be sickly when choked by concrete and asphalt.
These cost far less to maintain than having a team or two dedicated to upkeep for the trees.
That said, these things are a terrible idea, clearly the brainchild of clueless techbros, and overall a massive eyesore. Trees are objectively the better option. Just not Bradford Pear trees... Anything but the cum tree.
So I appreciate some outside the box thinking. But this just reeks of techbros invent trees but worse.
Most of the considerations below seem to think trees and cars are natural enemies, I would argue we reduce cars instead.
@ECEC
Any city manager could tell you everything wrong with having trees downtown.
* Birds get into them and when they're nesting, they attack anybody walking by
*Birds also shit on the cars parked under them, and most drivers look for shade to park under
*Bugs get into them and attract birds when birds aren't nesting
*Trees drop sap, which also ruins a car's finish
*city workers have to spend time on the clock keeping the leaves picked up off the ground
Yeah, the drawback is that the algae don't provide shade.
I’m only conjecturing, but there may be cities where planting trees isn’t feasible due to density of the city and the surrounding infrastructure. It may be cheaper to use these in place of trees, though I admit I know nothing about what’s pictured.