200 Trees Planted as Office Solutions

200 Trees Planted as Office Solutions

Seven office staff representing five businesses in north-western England have taken to social media to share their experiences in planting 200 trees.

The planters braved the cold to make a difference for the environment.

“This is so bloody powerful,” exclaimed Emily Leyland on LinkedIn. “We had the pleasure of helping plant 200 baby trees with these amazing people!”

The tree-planting initiative is the brainchild of Darren Turner (pictured), the managing director of MyTotal Office Solutions. “I’ve been putting regular requests out for local businesses to join our tree planting movement, so we can plant much more trees than just our business doing it,” he explained to RT ImagingWorld. “Everyone who took part is from the local northwest England business community.”

Turner claims he now has eight businesses involved. “I fund the tree planting program, and they buy-in as well. We each plant a tree for each new customer.”

Turner explains that once the first allocation of 200 trees has been used, he will fund further planting of 200 trees with the help of these and additional North West businesses.

Turner said he came up with the idea to plant trees out of a frustration with climate change. Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis, he opined. Scientific research backed his thinking because, as trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating.

“So I decided to plant some trees and our customers are going to help too,” he says. “We’re planting a tree for each customer taking any of our print technology solutions or internet-based office phone systems.” He explained with their very own tree planted, each new customer receives a certificate showing where their tree is planted which they can display to others.”

It was probably a small miracle that saw the owners of a local eight-acre field provide the much-needed land to make it happen. “Just before Christmas 2019, Pete and Paula Newton nominated their field in the Shawforth Hills in the Rossendale Valley to be used as our prime tree planting location for our plant a tree campaign.”

This latest tree planting vigil brings the forest up to 300 trees. The site has the potential for 2,500 trees. “Once this forest is full, we’ll create the second forest in Water (Rossendale), where we have a forest capacity of 5,000 trees,” says Turner.

The seven who turned up on the weekend, despite the cold and misty weather claimed they had no regrets. “I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday morning,” one planter said. “Think of the difference we could make if more people got involved.”

Turner’s dream has also been highlighted in RT ImagingWorld magazine. Download it and go to page 20 for the story and pictures.