49
submitted 9 hours ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/science@lemmy.ml
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] robotElder2@hexbear.net 1 points 4 hours ago

I think we're picturing a very different level of brightness achievable per plant. Replacing one street light would require a very large amount of glowing vegetation. Just the maintenance would be prohibitive. A city would need more gardeners than all other civil servants combined. And nevermind whether the fertilizer is produced from sewage or petrochemicals the runoff would be an enormous pollutant in its own right. Also it would be least effective in winter when the need for artificial light is greatest.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 hours ago

I mean you wouldn't necessarily need the same level of light, nor would you have to replace all the street lights with this. There's no reason these two things can't coexist. And sure, it wouldn't work in winter, but that's only a problem for specific regions. Large parts of China don't have cold winters.

this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
49 points (96.2% liked)

Science

20480 readers
99 users here now

Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage


founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS