Meet the Man Who Can Grow a Forest in Under 3 Years
Trees take years to grow, sometimes centuries! Eco-entrepreneur Shubhendu Sharma has tapped into a way to grow native, self-sustaining forests anywhere in the world with his special formula for success. The six-part process was fine-tuned after Sharma learned the ins and outs of producing healthy trees from Akira Miyawaki, an award winning botanist who has planted over 40 million trees around the world.
The two met while Sharma was working at Toyota, when Miyawaki was commissioned to plant a forest on the car manufacturor’s campus. After volunteering with Miyawaki, Sharma quit his job to take on a new career path – planting trees. The fruits of his labor culminated in the for profit company Afforestt, which plants native forests around the world for clients ranging from farmers and corporations to city governments.
Trees are one of Mother Nature’s greatest gifts as they clean the air, save water, attract diverse animals and species, conserve energy and much more. Sharma applied his industrial engineer background to trees by creating a computer program that registers tree species’ parameters in order to find the best combination of trees that will form a thriving forest. Afforestt is promoting their standardized method for seeding dense, fast-growing native forests in barren lands, with such remarkable results like a multilayered forest of 300 trees that is grown on a small space – the equivalent of six parking car spaces that costs the same as an iPhone.
Sharma was tapped as a TED and Ashoka Fellow, where he plans on spreading his fast-tree growing methodology near and far with an automated system that provides anyone with step-by-step instructions on how to plant a native forest. Just like his fast-growing trees, Sharma is full of creativity and passion and is working to make native forest planting faster, cheaper and more accessible to all.
Watch Sharma’s TED Talk here:
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