In this modern era, everything is getting digitalize and smart with time. There remains no sector where technology is not being used. In one perspective, digitalization of every kind of work can be main the cause of environmental pollution due to the amount of radiation generated by the digital devices. Joris Lam, A university drop-out student from the UK has changed the perspective of a lot of people by his creative startup idea called TreeWiFi. The basic idea of Tree WIfi is it is a kind of a digital nest of birds that is installed onto the trees in the streets to measure the air pollution of that area. It is equipped with the sensors that help to measure the pollution over the area and if the pollution gets degraded with time then the people living around will get free wifi service in reward.
The journey of getting the idea to develop it :
- The main person behind the idea, Joris
Lam has accepted and stated that he was never a studious person during his
schooling and also he was first-year college dropout student, But he was always
into the entrepreneurship and creativity. He had also started a video making
company when he was 20 years old.
- Being a person who cares about the environment, he researched and find out that at that time there are only 14 places where air pollution is being measured in his city. That makes him think to upgrade the existing technology and finally, it leads to an idea of TreeWiFi.
- Though the idea didn’t get much appreciation by the art school, Lam was confident and he continues his effort and somehow built a prototype model. He managed to get funding by the investors and finally worked on the idea with a team of 20 specialist researched and developers.
- The main motive was to reduce air pollution, to attract people and to push them to make efforts towards the environment, he collaborated with some of the network providers. There is an indication of green in the device when air pollution gets reduced in the area and then it started working like hotspot so that people around it can get their reward as free WiFi. People were also keen about the idea and it makes them feel that they are also making an effort towards the environment and better society.
- The idea encountered some trouble by the local authority, who felt it is not safe to share the air pollution measure of the area with everyone. They felt like this data should be confidential and should not be accessible to everyone around. The reason being that it is causing more awareness to people and they started to oppose any more construction or environment trouble in their area.
- After such incidence, Lam decided to increase reachability of the model and he open sourced the model along with its code so that anyone can learn from it and develop the model anywhere. after all, it is for a very good cause.
That was the complete story of the journey of Tree WiFi: a unique and creative way to save the environment with a digital house of birds. Definitely, the idea might be useful to get some more innovative idea from like-minded peoples. This is the way we can follow our passion and at the same time contribute to society to make it a better place for living.
