Each year, the country’s conservation sector, volunteer groups and tree-lovers come together to plant thousands of trees to mark the start of the annual tree planting season with National Tree Week – and we are doing our bit too. But why?
We are committed to supporting schemes and initiatives which promote our environmental and sustainability policy, and trees have a vital role to play in this.
Why are trees so important?
Forests create oxygen and help regulate the temperature of the planet. As we depopulate the world of trees, the global temperature rises.
Droughts occur more often, along with flooding, forests become drier with fires more frequent – all of which releases tons of CO2 into the atmosphere raising the earth’s temperature even more.
Interestingly, as the Amazon Rainforest is cleared and burned for agriculture, atmospheric oxygen levels have decreased. It’s no accident that the Amazon rainforest has been referred to as the lungs of the earth.
Every nation needs to seriously reduce their emissions and find a way of reducing the damage already done.
Technology is playing an important role in this, to help remove CO2 – the biggest culprit – from the atmosphere, but it is an expensive and complex process.
There is a simpler solution – and it’s our most powerful weapon in the fight against climate change: TREES.
Planting just one tree will result in the absorption of 21kg of CO2 per year?
So, what are we doing about it?
To help combat deforestation and offset CO2 emissions, Vail Williams takes part in a scheme called Fruitful Office as part of our wider Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Policy.
Fruitful Office works with their UK charity partner, Ripple Africa, to plant one fruit tree in Malawi for every one fruit box/basket that we have delivered to our offices.
Since we reinstated this project a year ago, post-Covid, 183 fruit trees have been planted in Malawi. That’s a CO2 saving of 3.8 tonnes over the last year, simply through planting trees.
But it doesn’t stop there – our people also play a part outside of the workplace, as Carole Thomas, our Risk and Compliance Manager explains.