We’ve all heard about and seen artificial trees. We see them in homes, hospitals, offices and even gardens where the fact that they require no watering, re-potting, preening or nurturing like real trees do, make them a popular choice.

At the moment, however, other than looking nice, artificial trees don’t do all that much for the environment. it is possible that this fact is about to change dramatically. An invention of artificial trees which are supposed to behave in the same way as real plants and trees has been produced by a US scientist. If this invention were to become reality, artificial trees could be taking in carbon in the same way that real trees do and contributing to the war on global warming.

The invention remains only an idea on paper at the moment and it doesn’t actually look anything close to a real tree, like artificial trees do. Dr Lackner, who is the scientist responsible for the idea, claims it presently looks more like an American football goalpost with lines in the middle.

These artificial trees could act like their real equivalents by drawing in carbon dioxide form the atmosphere as plants and trees do during the process of photosynthesis: the difference would be that the artificial trees would store the carbon instead of releasing oxygen.

According to Dr Lackner’s estimations, one of his artificial trees would be able to take care of around 90,000 tonnes of carbon each year. This roughly equates to the output of 15,000 cars. At this level we would need 250,000 artificial trees to absorb the 25 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide that we produce each year.

The invention might have interesting ramifications for the future or the artificial trees and plants business. Although it is still a long time off, let’s hope that we can combine this fantastic technology with aesthetically pleasing artificial trees to make a real difference to the future of our planet.

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