22 . 05 . 16
We drank a lot of tea during our May “Make Your Own” wooden surfboard workshop the week before last. Marcus and David were with us building and shaping their own boards – David made an 8’0” Pieces of Eight, whilst Marcus made the first “workshopper” version of an (as-yet unnamed) 7’9” classic down-railed gun that we’ll be launching later this year – and Marcus, being a true Yorkshireman, arrived on Monday morning carrying a big box of Yorkshire Treebags. Yup, “Yorkshire Tree”. It turns out that the folks at Yorkshire Tea have temporarily renamed themselves as part of an ongoing campaign to plant a million trees with the help of school children around the world.
“The
Gruffalo’s losing the deep dark wood.
Would you help him if you could?
Plant some
tress to fill the clearing
And stop the
wood from disappearing.”
Yorkshire Tea have had a tree planting scheme since 1990, and over the years have planted three million trees as well as working to save some significant areas of rainforest. Teabags are obviously made from paper and are then packaged in cardboard boxes so require “tree” products, so Yorkshire Tea use paper products from sustainably managed sources as well as planting more trees through their own schemes. In the UK they’re working with thousands of schools and have the Gruffalo as a mascot, educating children about their environment and planting 100,000 native saplings to date (the plan is to plant 500,000), whilst in Kenya they are planting seeds with school children and farmers. These trees in Kenya will produce crops of fruit and nuts, provide a habitat for honey bees and also form a physical border to prevent elephants from wandering onto farmland and damaging crops. In India and Honduras they’ve also planted saplings to reduce soil erosion and control flood risk.
