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Why planting trees?

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Simply put

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1. Human activity generates too much C02 and other gases that create a greenhouse effect (GHG) around our planet. This leads to global warming and climate change.
    

2. To counter climate change, we need to extract as much CO2 as possible from the atmosphere.  The easiest way to do this is by planting trees that absorb CO2 as they grow. 

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In greater detail

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We all leave a carbon footprint : the quantity of carbon dioxide that ’s emitted by the production of products we buy,  the transportation we use to go places, the spaces we live in, and so on.  It is easy to see that we continuously add CO2 to the atmosphere. 

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The good news is that the Earth possesses natural ways to deal with this CO2. Plants, trees and the oceans absorb it. The bad news, on the other hand, is that over the past 30 years we have considerably enlarged that footprint each year. This to a degree that the planet cannot catch up with us, and that there is a huge excess of CO2 in the atmosphere.

 

So, today we need to:
 

1. reduce what we continue to emit

   • by : less purchases = less  production + less distribution = less CO2

   • by consuming better : buy locally (less transportation), less plastic wrapping, etc.
      

2. and above all, re-capture as much as possible the CO2 that’s already in the atmosphere! 

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Plant trees to reduce the quantity of CO2 contributing to climate change.

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Planting trees is one of the most efficient solutions to counter the exces CO2 in the atmosphere that contributes to climate change. While trees grow, trees capture CO2 and dispose of the carbon which will from their trunk and their branches. It’s estimated that a tree is able to capture more or less its own weight in CO2 during its life time.  In fact, a tree is made of 35% water, of 10 to 15 % roots, and of 50 to 55% ‘dry mass”.  About half of that dry mass, so about 25 to 30 % of the tree is in fact carbon.  As the tree needs to absorb 3,67g  CO2 to produce 1g of carbon, he will absorb 3,67 times 25 to 30 % of its weight or 90 to 110% of its weight.  But a tree can be cut after a couple of years, which will have an impact on the total amount of CO2 that it will have absorbed.  For the trees that we plant with Graine de vie, we have estimated that they can have capacity to capture 5kg of CO2 per tree per year. 

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How does it work: your smartphone as an example

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Whether you just bought a new smartphone or whether you have it since a while, it has been produced somewhere in the word and has been transported to you.  These two actions needed energy that released carbon dioxide.  The use of your smartphone also needs energy, be it for charging or for all the servers needed to connect you to social media, to listen to music or to watch a video.  All in all, a smartphone leaves a CO2 imprint of 80kg on average.   

 

The easiest way to reduce the imprint of your telephone is to plant trees to absorb those 80kg of CO2. As we know the imprint we want to compensate, it is easy to calculate the number of trees that will be necessary if we take the place, type and timing plus the cost and maintenance of the trees into account.  

 

To contribute to the absorption of the CO2 excess, we’ll plant enough trees to compensate at least 200% of your imprint, which will create a positive imprint ! Whatever footprint you would like to neutralise, we plant the trees necessary to do so within 3 or 5 years.  As trees grow during at least 10 years, your imprint will be neutralised a second time.  While starting from a negative imprint for the environment, your act will create a neutral imprint in 5 years and become more and more positive as the trees continue to grow ! What’s more, you have the option to give details about your provider or distributer so that we can inform them of your action and encourage them to increase the number of trees to be planted. 

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