They’ve been pelted with greasy fast-food and plastered with posters highlighting how many school meals could have been bought by the money spent on them. A posters attached to one of the robot trees in Cork, suggesting that the money spent on the machines could have paid for 475,000 school meals for children in disadvantaged areas. It has now emerged that each device has an 800ltr water tank to keep the moss in its walls moist. But the CityTrees sparked huge controversy with critics labelling them robot trees, and environmental scientists describing them as gimmicks that will do little to tackle air pollution. Most critics said the money should have been spent instead on planting real trees.

Source: Irish Examiner August 17, 2021 17:26 UTC