A High School Student Designed This Tree Planting Robot
Her Inspiration Came From a Fascinating Mammal
Today’s eco snapshot👇🏽
A High School Student Designed This Tree Planting Robot
Startup of the week: Hipli
5 Sustainable Brands I Recently Discovered
News That Lifted My Spirits This Week
3 Ways I Can Support Your Sustainability Journey
🤖 A High School Student Designed This Tree Planting Robot
After learning how deforestation contributes to climate change, high school student Dorothy looked to nature for solutions.
She found inspiration in the pangolin, a mammal native to Asia and Africa.
Taking cues from how pangolins walk on their hind legs and use their front paws to dig for insects, Dorothy created a robot named Plantolin.
The robot features plywood scales covering its body and mimics a pangolin's movements—rolling on two rear wheels while using its front paws to dig into the soil.
After digging, it positions itself over the hole and releases a tree seed bomb—a small pellet containing seeds and soil—from its rear end.
This allows it to continuously move forward while restoring forests.
Dorothy's innovative Plantolin design won the annual Natural Robotics Contest and is now being developed for larger-scale implementation.
Check out the video below to see how Plantolin works:
⌛ Time for the quiz of the week
Answer at the end of the newsletter. No one (including me) can see your response so feel free to vote 😉
✨ Startup of the week: Hipli
This French startup allows you to fold and return your packaging boxes, helping you reduce your environmental impact.
Wasteful…Online shopping today is incredibly convenient. With just a few clicks, you can order anything and have it delivered to your doorstep in plastic or cardboard packaging. But this packaging is typically used only once before ending up in landfills. While we might assume it gets recycled, the actual recycling rate remains very low.
Circular…Although these packages are built to last, they are used only once, wasting the energy and resources that go into making and transporting them. Hipli is solving this problem by developing sturdy parcels with a patented folding system. These packages can be returned and reused up to 100 times.
This is how it works:
📦 Partner e-merchants buy Hipli packages to send their products to their customers.
📦 The consumer unpacks the box and, folds it up, and slips it into the enclosed postage-paid envelope.
📦 The packaging arrives back in Hipli's factories where it is checked and, after any necessary refurbishment, returns to the circuit.
Tracked…Each parcel has an RFID chip that is scanned on departure and return to keep track of everything.
✅ 5 Sustainable Brands I Recently Discovered
Tingit: helping people get their clothes, shoes, and bags repaired in a few clicks.
Azure Printed Homes: Solving the plastic and housing crisis together with 3D printed homes.
Plantables: Using upcycled cotton scrap infused with seeds to make paper.
Dirty Labs: Creating non-toxic house cleaning products.
Naturbeads: Tackling the microplastic pollution with cellulose microspheres.
😹 News That Lifted My Spirits This Week
🌞 Solar Sidekick: Balcony solar panels are taking Spain by storm, following Germany's successful installation of 1.5 million units. These affordable DIY panels, ranging from €400-800, can slash electricity bills by up to 30% without professional installation, making sustainable energy accessible to urban dwellers while maximizing vertical space in cities.
🐄 Moo-ving Forward: Colombian cattle farmers are pioneering sustainable ranching through innovative rotational grazing techniques that divide the land into smaller pastures. Their silvopastoral systems integrate trees and wildlife habitats, not only reducing methane emissions by up to 30% but also turning farms carbon-positive through enhanced biodiversity and carbon capture.
🌱 Growing Green Gains: Farmers in northern Ghana are embracing a clever combination of agroforestry and mixed farming to combat climate challenges. This sustainable approach integrates trees with crops and livestock, creating a natural ecosystem where trees retain moisture, manure enriches the soil, and wildlife controls pests. The result is a resilient farming system that not only adapts to climate change but also provides stable incomes while reducing dependency on synthetic fertilizers.
💁🏼 3 Ways I Can Support Your Sustainability Journey
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Give that 💚 a little tap if this edition helped you learn something new about sustainability and climate change. See you next week :)