Planting Empowerment engaged a team of MBA students from MIT's Sloan School of Business to study potential revenue generating opportunities from the "waste" generated from our plantations. These are the trees that are either crooked or too small to produce good timber in the future. The cutting of these trees allows neighboring trees to grow larger and increase the quality of the timber. Normally the waste trees are marked by a forester and then felled and left to rot. The decomposing trees do return nutrients to the soil, but our plantation undergrowth management plan produces sufficient nutrient recycling. The goal for the student team was to find a productive use for this waste through a business that would generate more work for the local communities, and revenues for our investors.

The team visited PE's plantations, neighboring plantations, local sawmills, and interviewed the local population. They have focused on producing biochar from the waste. Biochar is formed by burning wood waste in a special oven through pyrolysis. The biochar can be either used as initial fertilizer in PE's future plantations or sold to local small farmers. We look forward to continue working with the MIT team to further develop the processing and mechanics of the business. Our first real "waste" thinnings will probably occur either this May or early in 2011.