A portion of our profits from bicycle sales has been donated to Trees for the Future in support of sustainable agriculture projects. Every new bike owner will receive a gift certificate for helping to plant a grove of trees in our sponsored project location of Honduras. Our customers can see how their money is put into action here at www.plant-trees.org
Since 1988, Trees for the Future has assisted more than 170,000 families in 6,800 villages of Asia, Africa and the Americas, to plant over 50 million trees. These trees have restored sustainable productive life to more than 56,000 acres of land. Each year, these trees remove over 1,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the global atmosphere, while providing life-giving oxygen, food, medicines, shelter and beneficial habitat. Trees for the Future has helped communities around the world plant trees since 1989. Trees for the Future is an agro forestry resource center helping people in developing countries improve their rural livelihoods through the introduction of environmentally sustainable land management projects focused on beneficial tree planting. Since 1988, Trees for the Future has helped thousands of communities in Central America, Africa, and Asia improve their livelihoods and their environment by planting nearly 50 million trees. Trees for the Future calculates that these trees remove approximately one million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year. YOU AND THE GLOBAL CRISIS You know that the planet faces a myriad of problems: global warming and climate change, resulting in violent weather changes and rising oceans; the loss of millions of acres of forest every year and, with it, the extinction of countless species of plants and animals. You know of the resulting spread of deserts, of the threat to the world food security and the rapidly disappearing supply of drinkable water. You know the planet is warming up. We know that burning oil, coal, and other fossil fuels contributes to global warming by adding to a heat-trapping blanket of carbon dioxide around the planet. We know that carbon dioxide, regardless of where it is produced, distributes itself evenly throughout the global atmosphere. We know the island nation of Tivalu has signed a treaty with New Zealand so its population has a place to move to when the oceans swallow up their island. We know Bangladesh is losing much of its land to the growing sea, just as islands in the Chesapeake Bay have disappeared under the rising water levels over the past 50 years. You know the African Sahel is losing the battle to the encroaching Sahara Desert. We know that rising average global temperatures have already caused destructive and costly climate disruptions on every continent – heavy precipitation, heat waves, and extreme cold – and that more disasters are likely in the future. We know that the recent destruction in the eastern United States by several hurricanes is not normal. You know that farmers in our projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, are struggling with global climate change. You know we have higher rates of malaria and West Nile virus in places where they used to be nearly non-existent. So far, the problems resulting from global climate change are even more severe in tropical Developing Countries. Soil erosion on the mountainsides of Haiti, Honduras, and the Philippines, multiplied by hurricanes and tropical storms, are killing children and crippling families who have depended on these lands for centuries. The Nile River Basin is watching the River carry billions of tons of topsoil to the ocean while their crops fail and ancient aquifers run dry. We must look at the earth as an island in the black sea of space. Climate doesn't respect boundaries, and neither does pollution, carbon-dioxide, nor the lack of trees to produce oxygen. We only have one world, and we all share it. Why Trees for the Future? Through photosynthesis, trees and other plants take in carbon dioxide and replace it with oxygen. By restoring tree cover to barren lands, Trees for the Future has a very cost-effective way to continuously remove carbon dioxide (the major "greenhouse gas") from the global atmosphere. One acre of forestland will sequester between 150 - 200 tons of CO2 in its first 40 years.Trees absorb carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary gas causing global climate change. Trees retain the carbon (C) from the CO2 molecule and release oxygen (O2) into the atmosphere. The carbon makes up half the dry weight of a tree. Forests are the world's second largest carbon reservoirs (oceans are the largest). Unlike oceans, however, we can grow new forests. Planting new trees remains one of the cheapest, most effective means of drawing excess CO2 from the atmosphere. One acre of forestland will sequester between 150 - 200 tons of CO2 in its first 40 years. And when we start such projects in the developing countries of the humid tropics, we can plant about five times as many trees and remove about 15 times as much carbon for the same cost.There is a simple, effective way you can be part of the solution today. It's simple...plant a tree and cool the globe. |
