For every order we have, we plant a tree in partnership with our Reforestation Partner One Tree Planted. One tree though seems quite insignificant on the face of it so why do we think it is so important?
Tree planting has a mind-blowing potential to tackle the climate crisis and by planting billions of trees across the world, it is one of the biggest and cheapest ways of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere. A scientific study has made the first calculation of how many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas and concluded that there is 1.7 billion hectares of treeless land on which 1.2 trillion native tree saplings would naturally grow. That area is about 11% of all land and equivalent to the size of the US and China combined.
If such an endeavour were to occur then that worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions from human activities that remain in the atmosphere today! “What blows my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed,” said Prof Tom Crowther at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, who led the research.
Of course, scaling back carbon emissions is an urgent priority as reforestation will take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200 billion tonnes of carbon. The Overland is on the path to reducing our carbon emissions and we actively make changes wherever we can. We all cycle to work every day, re-use and recycle our office and home supplies and limit our international travel and flying time. Doing our Spring Summer photoshoots in the UK in January rather than flying out to warmer countries is a challenge but we feel all these small steps add up.
And so it is with planting one tree with every order. It’s not a solution on it’s own, but as part of a bigger picture, it is a powerful change. Just imagine if all retailers did this. As other brands have inspired us to make this step, we hope in turn we can inspire others too and between us all we can make changes that this world so desperately needs.