Have You Accepted the Million Tree Challenge?

Want something to look forward to? With Spring right around the corner, it is almost tree planting season again. Yippee!

Last year, via a lot of hard work and help from thousands of volunteers, 5,508 trees were planted in London, Ontario by ReForest London. That is great for the Forest City! The Million Tree Challenge also succeeded in registering over 97,000 trees planted in London, Ontario towards its goal of a million trees. That is a good start on their first 3-year goal of planting one tree for every Londoner.

In just 5 years, those trees will equate to 2,947,927 kg of carbon dioxide removed from the environment at a potential saving of $97,000. Jump another 10 years into the future and those 15-year-old trees will now remove 5,279,807 kg of carbon dioxide at a savings of $184,300.

Want some more numbers to get happy over? How about those same 15-year-old trees creating 114,363 kg of cleaner air at $1,067,000 in savings for London. They also improve water quality for 113,827,366 litres of water, at a savings of $242,500. Add in the 3,395,000 kbtu of energy savings and you are looking at a grand total of $1,901,200 worth of benefits for London.

That is just for 97,000 trees though, and over a 15-year time period. The Million Tree Challenge is aiming to planting one Million trees in London. Plus, the longer a tree lives, the more benefits it offers. So if the goal of 1,000,000 trees planted is met, we are looking at a potential benefit of $48,500,000. That is 110,000,000 kbtu of energy savings, 2,994,000 kg of cleaner air, 72,575,000 kg of reduced carbon dioxide and 1,930,560, 000  litres of improved water quality. Those are some impressive numbers.

So I ask you, did you plant one of those 97,370 trees? Have you promised to plant a few more? CLC Tree Services has already planted 61 trees towards that million tree mark. That includes 1 white ash, 1 white pine, 1 purple Dawyck beech, 3 Pagoda Dogwood trees and another 55 multiple species. We planted 45 trees alone last May 24th, 2012. If you didn’t quite get your hands dirty tree planting last year, there is still plenty of time to plant your own tree though. You can help out this worthy cause on your property, in your neighbourhood, at your local school, or with your favourite organization. Every tree counts.

And did you know that Spring is one of the best times of year to plant a tree? Time to decide where to plant your tree folks! And if you need help planting it, don’t be afraid to give CLC Tree Services a call at (519) 685-0257. That’s what we do!

How many trees will you plant this year?