In certain areas especially fast-growing trees can be planted in order to obtain biofuel. If this is done on fertile areas this is not ethical as these areas need to produce food. But on presently eroded areas planting trees in order to produce biofuel does not harm the food supply chain and therefore this is morally acceptable. It can even offer a living and income for the actual poor inhabitants who hardly are able to get an income from their degraded soils. Various techniques are being developed to distil and produce biofuel from trees or their nuts in an ecologically safe way. It is also possible to obtain wood tar from left overs from the wood processing industry, which can be distilled, among other things, into biofuel in various forms. In this simple way household fuel can become available to the local population.

Charcoal

It is also very interesting to produce charcoal from planted trees. If we produce charcoal from trees from nature, we add CO₂ into the atmosphere. If however we plant trees in order to produce charcoal we do not add extra CO₂: the trees unbind the CO₂ and while turning it into charcoals and burning it in order to cook and heat, we add the same quantity of CO₂ again into the atmosphere. 2/3rd Of humanity still cooks and heats with charcoal and if produced by planted trees this way of cooking and heating is much cleaner than if it’s done by burning fossil fuels that bring millions of tons of extra CO₂ in the atmosphere.

Conclusion:

• Charcoal from planted trees is a cradle to cradle solution
• Fossil fuels are not a cradle to cradle solution and make the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere rise.

With the Groasis waterboxx people with little money living on degraded soils can plant their own wood in order to cook and heat and use it as an alternative for the kerosene that they buy nowadays. This cradle to cradle solution being available for millions of people now through using the waterboxx will help us reducing the CO₂ pollution.