Will fireworks soon be a thing of the past?
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00This is a drone show put on by aerial display company Celestial, and while the performances
00:09they put on are spectacular light shows in the sky, much like fireworks are, these are
00:13not just for entertainment.
00:15The company has partnered with environmental organisation Greenpeace to raise awareness
00:19about the problems with fireworks.
00:21This is John Hopkins, co-founder of Celestial and one of the leaders of the project.
00:25So our goal at Celestial is to supersede fireworks, you know.
00:28We love fireworks, but they blow things up, they're single use, they make things catch
00:34on fire and they scare animals.
00:36So what we're trying to do is create something creatively more interesting, green, because
00:43we use renewable energy sources, and we don't scare the animals.
00:47According to sustainability site Treehugger, 4th of July fireworks give off more than 60,000
00:53metric tonnes of CO2 every year, or around what 12,000 cars emit in a year, which is
00:58why more recently some nations have tried to limit how many fireworks are set off during
01:01special events.
01:02Hopkins says they can fly 300 drones at a time, moving them in tandem to create incredible
01:07moving images.
01:08But Hopkins says this is just the beginning, likening current drone displays to rudimentary
01:12computer graphics of days past, and in the future with more drones and more advanced
01:17AI, they'll be able to create even better, higher resolution displays.