Progressive Wednesday

I See Trees of Green: Plant

Editor’s Note: This Wednesday topic first appeared on April 17, 2007. To read the introduction to “I See Trees of Green,” just click here.

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Plant:

This one might seem obvious, but it's still true. If you've got a yard, consider planting a new tree this year.

Here's why:

• Trees remove carbon dioxide from the air, replenishing it with oxygen.
• According to the EPA, trees reduce heat islands.
• Thanks to their root systems, trees help prevent erosion.
• With proper landscaping, trees significantly boost the value of your home.
• According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture: “The net cooling effect of a young, healthy tree is equivalent to ten room-size air conditioners operating 20 hours a day.”
• Trees create homes for songbirds.
• Trees reduce unwanted noise.
• According to the EPA, trees reduce flooding.
• If privacy is your thing, trees keep prying eyes at bay. Why kill trees to build an artificial fence when you could build a tree-fence?
• Trees can be a source of fresh, organic food for your family.
• Trees can shade your windows and house reducing the cost of air-conditioning.
• According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Department of Energy, “the strategic placement of just three trees can save an average household between $100 and $250 annually in energy costs.–

To know more about how trees can help you save on power, click this sentence to be taken to the American Public Power Association's “Tree Benefits Estimator.–

Plus, we've got two ways to help you plant a tree:

1. You can check out the Arbor Day website. By becoming a member, you get 10 free trees mailed to you with the postage already paid. And how much does it cost to become a member? 10 bucks. 10 bucks for 10 trees.
2. If you're not feeling up to planting your own trees, you can make a donation to Plant It 2020. For every dollar you donate, one tree gets planted. Here's the bonus: you can choose the state or country where the trees find a home. Or you can donate to Trees for the Future: forty smackers plants 400 (you read that right, 400) trees.

Update: Re-treeing western New York

Over the past few months you've read about the destruction of nearly a third of the trees in Erie County due to the early October snow storm. And you read about the efforts of many small organizations such as Re-tree WNY and individuals to repopulate the Buffalo area. If you need a quick refresher, click here or here. To this point most of that effort has been raising money to pay for the massive conservation effort. But to celebrate Earth Day, yesterday, the boots were on the ground.

For the first time this year the temperature broke 70 degrees and, as reported by WGRZ.com, hundreds of volunteers showed up at Delaware Park in Buffalo and planted more than 400 new trees. It's a small step. But that's what we're all about here at Progressive Wednesday. You have to plant the first tree before you can plant the 10,000^th.

But the fundraising efforts aren’t over. Please consider making a small contribution to Re-tree WNY if you haven’t already. And if you have, thank you on behalf of all the residents of planet Earth.

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WGRZ.com is also offering a free oak or sycamore tree valued at $100 to 20 groups or individuals. So if you have had a tree damaged during the storm, write them an email telling your story. They'll be giving out one tree every day from April 26th through May 23rd, making it easier for you to make “treeish– progress. Bravo, WGRZ. Bravo

I See Trees of Green

“[People have] made at least a start on discovering the meaning

of human life when [they] plants shade trees

under which [they know] full well [they] will never sit.–

— D. Elton Trueblood

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Problem:

I made the mistake of watching mindless television the other day, and I caught a show called Flip This House. The premise of the show is this: a hot-shot buys a dump of a house, renovates the hell out of it, and tries to sell it for a sizeable profit pronto. On this particular episode, the temporary far-too-capitalistic owner decided to cut down an 80-year-old maple to, and I quote: “Make the property look, I don't know, you know, more modern.– And I literally thought: Poor tree. It was like watching someone chainsaw and wood-chipper my grandma. Well, okay, it wasn't quite like that, but it still sucked like a Dirt Devil. I had to change the channel, and instead I watched a woman get a tattoo of a fire-breathing butterfly on her chest. (I wish I could make up stuff like that.)

We've written about trees a lot already (see here, here, here and here). But we're here again today, getting a jump on April 27: Arbor Day. And besides, there's much more — more than we can even cover this Wednesday — to type about the topic. Why? Two reasons:

1. We're kind of addicted to tree products: toilet paper, sheds, pink tissues, paintings, houses, paper towels, Christmas napkins, fences, Coaco Puffs cereal boxes, chairs, tables, barns, books, Happy Birthday banners, park benches, condos, Marlboro Ultra Lights, wallpaper, ceiling fans, hell, even letters to our aforementioned grandmothers. We're not trying to suggest we don't need this stuff (especially the Coaco Puffs). Most of it we do. But we (and by “we– I mean almost every single one of us including your friendly-neighborhood editors at Progressive Wednesday) forget about how this stuff came to be.

2. Trees are beautiful. We treat them like they're not.

And, if we needed more reasons to reconsider our treatment of trees, then there are these six brand-spanking-new troubling and weird facts about trees:

• The Amazon rainforest is being destroyed at twice the rate once suspected.
• Billboard owners in Georgia will soon be able to clear-cut up to thousands of trees covering several acres to make it easy to read their drivel on a single sign.
• The second largest rainforest in the world is located in the Congo. And despite a moratorium on logging there, “over 37 million acres of rainforest have already been granted to the logging industry, [in spite of] the fact that the area is vital for its biodiversity.–
• Tasmania is using banned chemicals to (wait for it) blow up trees.
• Global warming — which is partially fueled by Amazon deforestation — is actually causing spruce trees to grow in the Artic tundra, endangering animals that thrive on this land normally covered by permafrost.
• According to a recent article in Time, “900 million [trees] every year become pulp and paper.–

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Make Progress:

When I sat down and thought about it this week (and I don't mean on the couch in my shrink's office), I realized that I have fond memories of trees. I spent much of my youth in very, very rural America. The current population of my town? 1,488. I'm shocked we even have a zip code. The number of traffic lights? One. It serves no other purpose than decoration. While my area was short on, you know, humans, I did grow up surrounded by beautiful trees.

Swamp elms, silver maples, crabapples, pines, a redbud, a king crimson maple, ornamental pear trees, a little leaf linden, arborvitae, ash, and a river birch thrived in our yard. My parents planted a dwarf red delicious tree, an early Macintosh, a peach tree. We picked fresh fruits and gobbled them up, often able to eat an apple a day. Come early autumn, my mother peeled, pulverized and presser-cooked the fruits into jars of homemade applesauce.

My sister and I called the undeveloped land next to our house “the woods,– and we climbed trees, played with our pals, built forts, swung on vines, and sought out rabbits and groundhogs and squirrels. When a tree died in our yard, my old man pulled out an ax, and we stacked firewood to warm us during the frigid winters. Summers, our trees filled with robins, sparrows, and doves, and I woke, not to an alarm clock, but to the songs of birds.

As stewards of the environment, we have a duty to help trees, those towering plants, flourish. For the sake of the air, the animals, and, lest we forget, ourselves, let us celebrate Arbor Day the right way.

• Plant
• Click
• Write
• Recycle
• Join

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I See Trees of Green: Plant

Plant:

This one might seem obvious, but it's still true. If you've got a yard, consider planting a new tree this year.

Here's why:

• Trees remove carbon dioxide from the air, replenishing it with oxygen.
• According to the EPA, trees reduce heat islands.
• Thanks to their root systems, trees help prevent erosion.
• With proper landscaping, trees significantly boost the value of your home.
• According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture: “The net cooling effect of a young, healthy tree is equivalent to ten room-size air conditioners operating 20 hours a day.”
• Trees create homes for songbirds.
• Trees reduce unwanted noise.
• According to the EPA, trees reduce flooding.
• If privacy is your thing, trees keep prying eyes at bay. Why kill trees to build an artificial fence when you could build a tree-fence?
• Trees can be a source of fresh, organic food for your family.
• Trees can shade your windows and house reducing the cost of air-conditioning.
• According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Department of Energy, “the strategic placement of just three trees can save an average household between $100 and $250 annually in energy costs.–

To know more about how trees can help you save on power, click this sentence to be taken to the American Public Power Association's “Tree Benefits Estimator.–

Plus, we've got two ways to help you plant a tree:

1. You can check out the Arbor Day website. By becoming a member, you get 10 free trees mailed to you with the postage already paid. And how much does it cost to become a member? 10 bucks. 10 bucks for 10 trees.
2. If you're not feeling up to planting your own trees, you can make a donation to Plant It 2020. For every dollar you donate, one tree gets planted. Here's the bonus: you can choose the state or country where the trees find a home. Or you can donate to Trees for the Future: forty smackers plants 400 (you read that right, 400) trees.

I See Trees of Green: Click

Click:

Okay, people. This one's easy as a fried egg given one spatula flip. All you've got to do is give two clicks. First, click this sentence to be taken to the Rainforest Site (you can read more about this organization here). Then click the button that reads “Preserve Endangered Land– on that page. There — you've just help save some of the rainforests you generous little devil you. According to the site, over the past seven years “more than 153 million visitors have clicked to save more than 40,500 acres of habitat.–

This website is run by the good folks over at Charity USA, a for-profit organization that funds hunger, health care, animal, literacy, and ecological reform through advertising. If you purchase Rainforest Site gear, you can help raise even more of the green (pun intended). We researched this high and low and high again, and it's completely legit.

I See Trees of Green: Write

Write:

We know you live hectic lives, and so let us help you help others. While we always will encourage you to write letters to the editor of your own, we recognize that this can be a time-consuming and potentially daunting task. So, below you'll find a letter we've written, revised, and vetted over the past week. Feel free to copy, paste, alter, print, sign, fold, envelope, stamp, address, and ship this sucker off to your newspaper of choice.

Dear Editor:

April 27 is Arbor Day, a somewhat forgotten day celebrating trees, and celebrate them we should. Trees are like the lungs of our planet, inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen. They clean toxins from the air, and give us better air to breathe.

There are many things we can do to help the population of trees. We can plant trees ourselves — the National Arbor Day Foundation even offers free seedlings for a measly $10 membership fee.

We can help stop the destruction of the rain forests — at EcologyFund.com, folks can make a few simple clicks of the mouse and help save rainforests and the animals thriving in them.

But there's a third, very easy thing we can all do: we can recycle paper products. I encourage everyone to take another look at this fine newspaper. Learn from its stories. Mourn its obituaries. Chuckle at its comics. Then, my fellow readers, please recycle it.

Sincerely,

You

I See Trees of Green: Recycle

Recycle:

Sometimes recycling seems easier said than done. In our continuing effort to make your life more like Okay, Oklahoma and less like Difficult, Tennessee, here's a site for you: Earth911.org. We've even added a banner on our sidebar for your convenience and as a reminder string tied around your computer's finger.

When I lived in Columbus, for a nominal fee, you could get recycling pick-up at your home or apartment. In my corner of Western New York, we have free curbside recycling pick-up. In other locations, you might not be so lucky. But recycling ain't as tough as timber.

Through Earth911.org, you're able to find recycling centers near you or learn if there's the potential for folks to snag your recyclables (in this Wednesday's case, paper products) right from your home.

But why recycle paper you ask? Well, the benefits are, quite frankly, too numerous and detailed to describe in full here, but here's a partial list. Recycling paper does all of the following:

• Preserves forests
• Reduces solid waste, whether measured by weight or volume
• Generates less air pollution
• Reduces greenhouse gasses
• Improves water quality
• Reduces the release of nitrogen oxides
• Reduces the release of air particulates
• Creates jobs
• Improves the economy
• Saves energy
• Sustains the environment
• Reduces absorbable organic halogen emissions to water
• Protects biodiversity
• Reduces the need for new landfills
• Stimulates the development of greener technologies
• Preserves the planet for future generations

All this information is sourced from nonpartisan governmental organizations: the EPA, the State of Pennsylvania, and the Office of the Federal Environmental Executive. Feel free to check it out for yourself.