The Joy of Trees.
At Green Salon, we’re pledging 5% of our profits to TreeSisters, a tropical reforestation programme, with the goal of planting 10,000 trees by 2025. Our CEO and Sustainability Consultant, Lucy Johnson, explains why.
There are few things as evocative to humans as trees. They form the architecture of our landscape and they splash colour all over it: the russet-red and burning orange maples of the American East coast fall or pink spring blossom bursts against brilliant blue skies. They create shade canopies on summer days and scent the warm air with sprays of flowers.
And they give us life.
Without trees we would not have enough oxygen to breathe, there would be less rainfall as their roots drink moisture from the soil and their leaves release it back into the air and without their woody habitats there’d be precious little biodiversity.
Trees have been the scenery of my life. I vividly recall the towering elms of my childhood, dark scarecrows against a glowering winter sky, and how the Dutch Elm Disease felled these giants. I was 7 years old at the time.
My dad, always tree mad, planted an arboretum of some of the rarest and most beautiful trees in our family garden. But this was not enough for him. On the proceeds of books he wrote, he bought an abandoned farmhouse in the heart of France, and planted a small forest.
When my parents sold this, they invested in a forest in Snowdonia National Park and went about replacing the monotonous ranks of Sitka spruce with oaks, rowans, maples, ash and more. Each year, my husband and I take our children on a pilgrimage there.
I have always dreamt of having a forest of my own. But living in the middle of London, our woodland is a couple of small winter flowering cherry trees. So when I thought about how Green Salon could give back to the planet, the choice was obvious: I knew I wanted Green Salon to plant trees.
In the last 12,000 years since human agriculture began, we have lost nearly half of the world’s trees. We chop down 15 billion trees a year, and plant only 5 billion. By this score, the trees are losing.
We need a reforestation revolution.
Our partner, TreeSisters, is at the heart of this revolution. They have so far planted more than 20 million trees in the tropics, a particularly beneficial place to reforest as trees absorb 30% more carbon there. They are planting trees in more than 10 countries, including Madagascar, India, Brazil, Kenya, Nepal, Mozambique and Cameroon.
The tropics is also where most trees are disappearing. Global Forest Watch estimates that in 2019 the world lost 5.4 million hectares of forest - 95% of which was in the tropics. The biggest driver of this tree toppling? Land clearance for beef, soy and palm oil. Beef, alone, accounted for 41% of tropical deforestation.
The politics of tropical deforestation are complex. For many developing countries, chopping down trees is the fastest way to harvest money to feed growing populations.
But a 2018 economic analysis, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, found that the short term gain of deforestation is, just that, short term. Conserving the Amazon could be worth $8.2 billion. Some of this is through sustainable industry like rubber tree timber and Brazil nut farming, but the lion’s share is carbon sequestration and regulating the local weather - not to mention the planet’s.
We need a more intelligent way to think about tropical forests. Cutting down on the drivers of deforestation is hugely important: but so is an income for developing nations. Companies adopting forests is one way of doing it, as is rainforest countries earning money from their plants being used in medicines.
Forest Farming, where food, herbs and medicines are grown among and under canopies of trees, is another smart, and age-old, solution. But all of these solutions need to be expanded hugely - and quickly. Kib Teas,* featured on our Food Directory, is forest farmed tea from Ethiopia - and all the better for it.
TreeSisters, too, are intent on returning the earth’s tropical forests to what they once were: billions of hectares of rich habitats teeming with millions of different species of plants and animals and in symbiosis with their human inhabitants.
So while right now I can’t grow a forest in my backyard, Green Salon has teamed up with TreeSisters with the goal of planting a forest in the tropics of 10,000 trees by 2025. Pretty ambitious, I know, but with our clients I believe we can achieve it.
Forest Farming Initiatives:
We analyse each brand for their commitment to sustainability but we are not a certification body, nor are we auditors, and we have taken the approach that we trust brands to tell the truth about their sustainability policies, practices and plans.
Affiliate disclaimer: ❀ indicates affiliate links with brands to help fund the Directory so that we can research further sustainable brands. This does not affect the price you pay.
Ready to lead a greener lifestyle? How our directory works is a great place to start!