Buy One Get One Tree

Last edited: Wednesday, 19th September 2007, 4:00 pm
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innocent, the hugely successful maker of fruit smoothies, has teamed up with the carbon offset company Carbon Clear to plant a tree for every innocent smoothie you buy.

For every innocent smoothie carton sold in leading supermarkets in October, innocent will get a tree planted in one of Carbon Clear's dedicated reforestation projects. All you have to do is log on and register your unique code, and the rest will be taken care of for you.

The aim of the Buy one Get one Tree initiative is to get over 100,000 trees planted in rural communities in Africa and India. The groups choose the varieties of trees that best suit their needs themselves, and innocent's donation will ensure they are looked after for 30 years.

Although tree planting alone is not enough to combat climate change, the tree planting project with innocent and Carbon Clear provides some other more tangible benefits for those communities where the trees will be planted.

The project reduces greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging the growth of trees to achieve long-term CO2 sequestration on formerly degraded lands in low-income tropical communities.

Carbon Clear's project is aimed at improving local livelihoods by providing ongoing income linked to tree survival and growth. This reduces communities' vulnerability to crop failures and other income. The trees provde additional benefits by helping to reduce soil erosion on agricultural lands, and by ultimately yielding fruits, seeds and other useful products for local farmers.

Because the trees take several years to reach maturity and provide seeds and other useful products, farmers have little incentive to use their scarce time planting the trees and nurturing them without financial support from Carbon Clear. Carbon Clear provides financial and technical support to help local farmers successfully grow the trees to maturity.

Permanence: Carbon Clear provides incentives for permance by paying farmers for tree survival and growth, not for tree planting. Trained assessors evaluate the condition of the trees several times each year and use GPS monitors to track tree location. To compensate for potential mortality, Carbon Clear plants 11 trees for each tonne of CO2, and uses a ten-year crediting period, compared to an industry standard of one tree per tonne over 35-100 years.

Jessica Sansom, sustainability manager, innocent drinks, said:
"Buy one get one tree is all about making it simple for innocent smoothie drinkers to do their little bit. Trees have so many positive benefits to offer local communities from providing a source of income, to enriching the soil and providing shade. We're really excited about the scheme."


 

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