Could Boxes of Water Help Reforest the World? | Hacker News Reader

Could Boxes of Water Help Reforest the World?

scientificamerican.com

60 pointsstretchwithme28 comments

With this paragraph alone, he has doomed his project to failure:

"Right now, Hoff sells the boxes for $275 for 10, manufactured in his native Holland, but he envisions local production wherever the box is sold. "I think it's a disaster that the only people who know how to weave clothing are in China," he said. Gardening and home-improvement stores could sell them for about $15, he said."

The problem is that local production costs more. If it costs more it will be used less. It's as simple as that.

He should pick his battles. Conserving water, and growing trees is awesome. Let others worry about China, focus on your mission.

My prediction: Unless he gives up this ideal you will never hear about these boxes again.

Yes. Just think about how much more of these boxes he could sell if he produces them dirt cheap in China. This could easily offset all the negative impacts of shipping etc. He even says himself that if you plant enough trees, an increase in CO2 emissions can be offset.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

If he’s not interested in patenting the box and enforcing the patent worldwide, then Chinese manufacturers are free to make the box and sell it (or the Chinese government can give the boxes away as part of its own foreign-aid programs), whether Hoff thinks that’s a good idea or not.

Also, if it’s possible to design a variant of the box that farmers or unemployed workers can build for themselves out of locally available materials, then the locally built product may be competitive with the imported version.

The last slide on http://www.groasis.com/page/uk/principle.php seems particularly odd in an idealistic sense:

With the waterboxx we can transform most of the deserts into forests

Deserts are an obvious harsh climate, to humans who live in, uh, more temperate zones in urban areas, but they are not completely barren to the point they need to be "saved". All one needs to do is watch the popular Planet Earth series to see that. Reforestation should be concentrated on in those areas that are having trouble recovering after we've explicitly removed all the trees, not areas that never had trees to begin with.

Deserts are themselves intricate ecosystems like any other.

How about the Sahara? Pretty darn barren and a lot bigger than it used to be.

One of the major issues we have in Australia is people stealing the saplings. Likely the box would be stolen as well, mores the pity.

Unless they are destroying them or exporting them far, far away, then it's still a net increase in the number of trees in a certain area, no?

Or maybe they steal them in order to sell them back to you?

That may not be good for your pocket book, but it still doesn't decrease the number of trees in a certain area.

Someone came to my grandma's garden in the dark of night and stole all of her flowers. Apparently, some horticulturists are thugs.

Perhaps some horticulturists are rabbits? My wife planted about 120 tulip bulbs, which was nice the first year but by the second the rabbits found them, from there on all we ever saw was stems and leaves.

Some of them were in pots on the porch. The pots disappeared as well. One was more or less a little tree. This has happened at several homes throughout the neighborhood. God help us if these rabbits develop a taste for human flesh.

Similarly, I wonder how long durable water-collection pots would stay scattered around trees in impoverished, drought-stricken areas.

... which argues that policymakers should leave the climate debate aside and focus on planting trees. Planting 5 billion acres of trees -- about 2.5 times the surface area of Canada

That's a lot of trees!

s/trees/boxes/

s/boxes/sales!/

Interesting idea, distributed reservoir with a shading house. It should be produced as cheaply as possible to ensure the widest use. $15 is very expensive in other countries, and yes, thief would happen. If it's dirt cheap, no one would care.

Also for people stealing sapling, how about planting unattractive trees? Like poisonous trees. Nature doesn't care one way or the other.

How does he prevent mosquitoes from breeding in the small pools of standing water?

The pool is enclosed and accessible only through a siphon.

The box is brilliant but I don't understand the recommendation to bury the young tree in up to 4 inches of sand after removing the box. It doesn't seem natural and wouldn't it stress and possibly suffocate the small roots and trunk base? It sounds worse than a "mulch volcano". The hemp cloth could be staked to the ground and a small amount of mulch or nearby soil used instead.

The idea is really neat. If you want a really nice visualization of how the whole thing works you can find it on his website:

http://www.groasis.com/page/uk/principle.php

The problem is not lack of rainwater. Trees are not mysteriously vanishing, we are cutting them down.

What this addresses is the lack of water once we have cut down the trees. Because we are chopping them down the way the soil holds the water changes. Deep in the earth it often raises the water table (which can lead to increased soil salinity as the rising water table dissolves salts). Critically however for saplings, the soil close to the surface dries out as the natural mulch and shade a pre-existing forest provides no longer exists.

I suppose I did not really expand upon my point as much as I should have. You are right, it is a useful development, and may prove crucial in the future. I am familiar with why it can be needed in areas devoid of trees.

However, it seems that planting trees is like giving a blood transfusion to someone who has a massive arterial bleed. Yes, you are helping, and it is needed, but the real problem should be addressed first- deforestation.

I'm certainly not saying deforestation should not be addressed but there also needs to be practical solutions to fix the enormous areas of land have already been logged.

$27 for a plastic box? My city gives recycling boxes away for free, about the same size. No reason these should cost above a dollar or two.

Watch the flash video given in a previous comment (http://www.groasis.com/page/uk/principle.php). There is a lot more to this "box" than what you get with your recycling bin.

Standard mass production should bring the cost way down. As for theft, just make sure they are free for anyone that wants to have one, the biggest cost for a big program will be the planting labor. But it will not solve global warming in the period of any politician so it's unlikely to be funded at the level really needed.

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