Ready for part 2? Click here!

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Grant Canary is the founder and CEO of Droneseed, a startup that reforests after wildfires using heavy-lift drone swarms in what once were heavily forested areas.

Droneseed was founded to make reforestation scalable and to mitigate one of the worst effects of climate change. The company is now a 1-stop-shop for reforestation providing seeds, seedlings, aerial seeding, and financing through carbon credits.

Grant has dedicated his entire career to sustainability—including working for the US Green Building Council in its early days, is a Mulago Foundation Fellow, and was on the Grist List of 50 Fixers.

We dive deep into…What a maggot entrepreneur is, the abbreviated history of reforestation, how carbon recaptured on a small scale is only a ‘feel good’ product, what it takes to scale to 1 million+ acres, and so much more! Including…How is the average (human) tree planter a superhero?

This episode is particularly valuable for…everyday tech employees like Ty & myself, who might not know much about climatetech and want to know about some of the most newsworthy, badass technologies happening to get us out of this mess. As well for environmental stewards, environmental activists, and generally anyone who considers themselves an Earth lover ✋

Onward (& up)!

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Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or on your favorite podcast platform. 

Show Notes

• [3:40] What’s a maggot entrepreneur? How were you one.
• [5:39] Why Bogotá?
• [7:01] Why maggots, not meal worms?
• [9:31] What’s a tree machine gun?
• [12:15] Was it actually a gun-shaped thing?
• [13:13] Where Droneseed began, with seed planting
• [14:30] When did you start thinking about climate change?
• [17:41] What’s the business of reforestation?
• [21:33] How forests are burning & burning at greater and greater levels
• [22:45] What the reforestation industry evolved into & Silvaseed
• [24:39] What are seed zones?
• [26:03] When you say you’re moving seeds, who’s putting them into the ground?
• [28:41] How they deploy seeds onto land, using drones
• [29:43] Carbon offsets simply explained
• [31:50] Reforestation carbon offsets explained
• [33:17] Where most past carbon offsets have come from
• [34:12] What Droneseed’s carbon offset projects look like
• [36:23] The financial flywheel of carbon offset projects
• [36:54] How can small carbon offset projects sometimes only be a “feel good” product?

Links from Episode

• Connect with Grant: LinkedIn | Twitter
• Droneseed
• Insect meal for fish feed
• Bogotá, Colombia
• What the Kyoto Protocol is
• Black soldier fly (Hermetia Illucens)
• C-17 (Cargo Plane)
• A Day In The Life of A Tree Planter
• Capsaicin
• Carolina Reaper (pepper)
• Ghost Pepper
• Scoville Scale
• The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis
• Fire Severity
• Himalayan Blackberry
• Scotch Broom
• Weyerhaeuser
• Silvaseed
• Seed Zone
• Douglas Fir (tree)
• The Nature Conservancy
• Carbon Offset
• American Canopy
• Forest Carbon Offsets
• Verra
• The Gold Standard (Carbon Offsets)
• Climate Action Reserve (Carbon Offsets Standard)
• Shopify
• Planet app
• US Green Building Council

Have you ever been affected by forest fires? What happened? Share below 🙏🏽