A ground-breaking initiative to plant 100 million trees around the world has been launched from the United States to benefit the planet’s health and sustainability.

The Time for Trees campaign has been launched by The Arbor Day Foundation, the largest US-based non-profit organisation dedicated to planting trees. The campaign is aiming to plant 100 million new trees and inspire 5 million new tree planters worldwide by 2022, the organisation’s 150^th anniversary.

If that target is reached, the massive number of trees would collectively absorb 8 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year, enough to offset the impact of approximately 6.2 million cars. The organisation says the trees would also filter 15,850 tons of airborne particulate matter and 578,000 tons of chemical air pollution from the atmosphere, while intercepting and filtering around 7.1 billion cubic metres of water runoff.

Arbor Day Foundation President Dan Lambe said it was time to recognise the incredible positive impact that trees have on our global environment.

“It can be easy to take trees for granted, but they are absolutely critical to maintaining balance on our planet—supporting clean air and water, healthy food and a liveable climate,” Lambe said in a press release.

“By restoring tree loss around the world, we’re making a significant investment in our collective future—paving the way for the health and well-being of people in this and future generations.”

Whilst the Arbor Day Foundation will aim to plant the trees in a wide range of ecosystems, particularly tropical rainforests, they will pay particular attention to towns and cities that have lost trees due to extreme weather disasters, diseases, and over-development.

 

Positive Action

• While the Time for Trees campaign is based in the United States, you can get involved in Australia’s largest community tree-planting event by getting your hands dirty as part of National Tree Day 2019.

 

Subscribe to Positive Environment News
Positive Environment News has been compiled using publicly available information. Planet Ark does not take responsibility for the accuracy of the original information and encourages readers to check the references before using this information for their own purposes.