International Day of Forests - We are donating trees to a restoration project in India
Tuesday the 21st of March is the International Day of Forests. This is obviously something that Westpack wants to support. So, like the two previous years, we are hosting a fundraiser to raise funds to plant trees. But this time, the trees will be planted in India.
At Westpack, we like to support good causes. That is why we are happy to donate funds to reforestation projects. For every order that is placed in our online store from March 20 to March 27, we are donating (funds equal to) five trees* to OneTreePlanted’s reforestation projects in India.
OneTreePlanted is a non-profit organization working to re-establish forests and increase biodiversity worldwide. In 2022, they planted more than 52 million trees in 74 different countries. The organization collaborates with local partners, who are responsible for selecting, cultivating, and planting trees. Indigenous varieties are selected depending on the specific location of the forests that are to be re-established.
Planting fruit trees in India: An investment in the future
Large-scale industrial projects can severely impact forest lands in developing countries. This is also true for India. It is estimated that 14,000 square kilometers of forests were destroyed because of industrial projects since the early 1990s.
This is why we want to support OneTreePlanted’s efforts to plant fruit trees in India. The NGO predicts that each planted fruit tree could provide $10 worth of food and nutrition every year. Keeping in mind that it only costs $1 to plant a tree, it becomes obvious that the initiative could be very helpful for the local population. The workers plant a wide range of different fruit trees including apricot, banana, mango, papaya, peach, pomegranate, and many more.
As an additional benefit, each new tree will play its own small part in improving air quality and helping the climate thanks to carbon sequestration.
About reforestation in India
According to OneTreePlanted, restoring forests could improve the lives of the estimated 275 million Indians, so it is a worthwhile cause to support projects that counteract deforestation.
One of the things that OneTreePlanted excels at is involving the local communities. This is also the case in India, where they work with local communities in 12 out of the 28 Indian states.
Did you know?
Westpack has a set-up where we donate funds (equal to) two trees to OneTreePlanted’s project in Indonesia for every container-foot of products we ship out of the country. In fact, we have given donations to OneTreePlanted’s projects in Indonesia for the past seven years. We will continue to do so, but this year, we wanted to add another project. Reading through the NGO’s description of their various projects, we found the projects in India to be particularly exciting.
UN's Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15
At Westpack, we want to contribute the way we can. We are not in the business of planting trees, but we can choose to support an NGO like OneTreePlanted financially because we like their cause. One of the Sustainable Development Goals Westpack focuses on is SDG 15 - Life on land – with target 15.2. This target is about promoting the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halting deforestation, and restoring degraded forests.
About the International Day of Forests
In 2012, the UN's general assembly decided that March 21 is the International Day of Forests. On this day, the countries of the world are encouraged to launch initiatives aimed at protecting and restoring natural habitats - for example, through tree planting campaigns. The Theme for 2023 is “Healthy forests for healthy people".
Read more about the International Day of Forests at the UN..
*We donate five trees per order in the period March 20 to 27, 2023. Applies to orders with a value of at least 10€.