Love A Tree Day 2020 - How Can You Stop Deforestation?

Whats So Special About Trees Anyway?

Love A Tree Day gives us a change to reflect on something important. Trees. Nearly half, 46%, of the world’s forests are already destroyed. This means that every 1.2 seconds humans destroy an area of forest equal to a football field. We know that trees play an important part in our ecosystem, but did you know that “the rainforest helps to regulate the worlds water cycle. Trees play an important part in the water cycle, grounding the water in their roots and releasing it into the atmosphere. In the Amazon, more than half the water in the ecosystem is held within the plants. Without the plants, the climate may become dryer and growing food could become impossible for many.“[1]

In a nut shell, without trees we would very much struggle to exist. Yet 80,000 acres of forest are being destroyed every single day. As well as the forests being so key for our existence, they are also home to 70% of Earth’s land animals and plants. Unfortunately, if we keep going like this 28,000 species are expected to become extinct by the next quarter of the century.

Love A Tree? What Can You Do About It?

I know it can feel impossible to make a difference when huge corporations are (largely) illegally destroying the forests. However, there are things we can do to make sure we aren’t making it worse than it has to be.

Donate To Charities Planting Trees
Use Ecosia Who Plant A Tree For Every Search
Go Paperless
Reduce Your Meat Intake (Going Vegan Is Even Better!)
Use Your Own Coffee Cup
Avoid Throwaway Paper Such As Paper Plates And Napkins

Ecosia is a search engine that plants a tree every time you make a search. The revenue they get from ads and your clicking means they have been able to plant over 94 MILLION trees. Switching search engines is hardly going to impact your life so this is a super easy yet effective one. As well as Ecosia, theres’s tonnes of ways to use the internet to reduce your carbon footprint on the earth such as cleaning our your emails every day.

If you want to go a step further, you can donate to charities working to plant trees. A big one is One Tree Planted who plant trees across America, Australia, Asia and Africa. They work with businesses and hold lots of fundraising events to raise money to continue their work planting and looking after trees.

Say No To Paper

Going paperless speaks for itself. Most companies offer paperless solutions as it also saves them money. Set your emails up so all your important paperless bills etc can go into their own folder so you don’t miss anything you shouldn’t.

Reducing your meat intake and ideally going vegan will make one of the biggest impacts to the forests. “Already 56 million acres of land are used to feed farmed animals, while only 4 million acres produce plants for human consumption. It takes 20 times less land to feed someone on a plant based diet than it does to feed meat eaters.“[2] So yes, of course land is cleared to grow crops and soy etc. but far more is cleared to accommodate farm animals who feed far less people. By reducing your meat intake and ideally going vegan (as land is still needed to raise cattle for dairy) then you’ll be drastically reducing the land needed to feed yourself.

Lastly, just using a reusable coffee cup will save thousands of trees. “We bulldoze forests containing well over 350,000 trees each year just for the paper in the UK’s disposable coffee mug epidemic. That figure would go well over half a million when all the disposable paraphernalia that goes with them is included.“[3] So do the forest a favour and take your own. That goes for any throwaway papers, do you really need to use a paper plate at that summer BBQ? Do you really need that napkin with your drink? It’s time to think about the consequences to our actions.

I hope this has given you something to think about, love a tree and stay safe x