How We Can Manufacture Forests Like Toyota Makes Cars

Forests and individual trees offer numerous benefits that include absorbing carbon emissions and noise, conserving energy and shielding shelters, preventing water pollution or soil erosion, and even increasing property values and reducing violence along city streets. An industrial engineer with Toyota applied strategies from the car manufacturer and Japanese forester Akira Miyawaki to growing trees with his 2011 startup known as Afforestt. “In pitching his company, Sharma says the world loses about 36 football fields of forest in any given minute,” reports Marcus Wohlsen for Wired. “Nature simply can’t outrun that rate of depletion on its own.” The strategy entails dense planting of native species to allow an ecosystem quickly take root. Wohlsen concludes, “Internet-connected soil probes also could let Afforestt monitor forest growth from afar and help would-be urban foresters anywhere on their progress.” – YaleGlobal