In Tree Awareness Week, Julia and The Outdoor Guide teamed up with the Premier Paper Group to step out in wellies and wield spades to plant trees – thousands of them!
Working with dozens of volunteers (Dunlop lent its support by donating the boots), we all headed off to Derbyshire. The event saw us partnering with the Woodland Trust and Premier to give a mixture of native broadleaved trees a great start in life.
Those trees form Mead, site of the UK’s first Young People’s Forest, adjacent to Shipley Country Park. It’s part of the #iwill campaign to promote youth social action.
Premier gives companies the opportunity to work closely with the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity in order to mitigate their CO2 emissions from paper purchases through the Carbon Capture programme. The programme gathers contributions from the paper bought by customers to be passed on to the Woodland Trust to fund the planting of native British trees.
It’s a great practical initiative with far-reaching effects that captures carbon from the atmosphere, creates beautiful areas of woodland and develops natural habitats for wildlife. Funds raised for this invaluable work by the Carbon Capture programme have hit over £1 million. Truly impressive!
The site, where young people will plant the majority of the 250,000 trees planned for the site over the coming years, will give them unrivalled access to nature. It comes as the charity commissioned a survey which showed three quarters of young people want to get involved in fighting climate change.
Almost two thirds are interested in protecting British birds and animals, 63% in planting trees and three quarters in reducing pollution and plastic waste. Nationally, nine out of ten young people say they would visit the site.
The survey also indicated that young people recognise green spaces as being good for mental health with over half saying they would get involved in mindfulness events and workshops in green spaces.
We are delighted to be involved!
