At The Pyjama House, we love trees!
Lucky for me, The Pyjama House is run from my lovely old home in North Yorkshire and over the past 20 years that I have lived here (and 15 years running the business) never a year has gone past when we haven’t planted more trees. They’re beautiful to look at through the different seasons, they provide home and shelter for all sorts of birds and little animals (we have had kestrels nesting for the past two years) but best of all we now know that trees suck carbon emissions out of the atmosphere on a daily basis.
As of March 2021 we have been investing in trees a bit further afield and not the British national trees that we have at home, but in huge numbers of Mangrove plants in Madagascar. Our investment is via Terra Neutra who specialise in carbon offset projects such as this one. Terra Neutra is an EcoPartner of Graine de Vie. Graine de Vie is an NGO, founded in Belgium in 2009. Since 2009 Graine de Vie has initiated reforestation projects in Madagascar, Togo & Benin and planted over 25 million trees.
This has resulted in a whopping 100,000 tonnes of CO2 sequestered each year.
To put that into perspective, the average UK resident’s carbon footprint is around 8 tonnes. So GdV’s trees are balancing around 12,500 people (including The Pyjama House) per year.
That’s a fantastic achievement but when you consider that there are around 69,000,000 people in the UK alone – well, we need to plant a lot more!
There are lots of tree-planting options at Terra Neutra. You can plant anywhere from 20 to 1,000… One tree makes a difference – and at 23p / tree, we hope that should be something that any individual or business will feel that they can afford. Click on this link to visit their website and sign up now.
Through Terra Neutra, The Pyjama House will be helping Graine de Vie plant trees in Madagascar, one of the most deforested countries in the world.
2% of Madagascar’s forest area is destroyed every year but it is still the 2nd largest primary rainforest outside of Amazonia. It contains vast reforestation territory and is one of few countries on our planet where the rate of rainfall still enables large-scale reforestation projects.
And critically, trees planted in Madagascar have a carbon absorption capacity 10 to 15 times greater than those planted in highly developed regions of the globe.
To date, Graine de Vie has created 132 tree nurseries in 16 of the 22 regions of Madagascar and in 8 schools. They have also initiated 9 projects restoring mangrove trees and 11 projects protecting and restoring the national parks of Madagascar.
Graine de Vie’s projects support the UN Sustainable Development Goals, specifically:
- SDG 1: No Poverty
- SDG 2: Zero Hunger
- SDG 13: Climate Action
- SDG 15: Life on Land
- SDG 17: Partnerships for Goals
Graine de Vie members work with local communities to plant, develop and monitor each of their reforestation projects. Each planting site has a nursery site which is looked after by people from local villages, who are also employed as tree planters thereby providing employment and helping improve the lives of the people living in the reforestation areas.
It’s a brilliant project, contributing to all those important SDGs.. with Cop26 only a week away, why don’t you sign up and do your bit too!