"Trees for Trees" Press Release

Feel free to take and copy any elements!

Contact: Danica Northend
Tel. 626-395-7641
Cell: 925-200-7429
Email: Danica@chronicleproject.org

CREATIVE WAY TO USHER IN THE HOLIDAY DO-GOOD SPIRIT
A Green Non-Profit Organization Says, Take Home a Tenanbaum AND Plant a Forest!

This year Eden Reforestation Projects (ERP), a 501(c)3, challenges Holiday patrons to match the cost of their Christmas tree with a donation to replant forests in Africa in a pioneer program they call “Trees for Trees.”

“The average cost of one chopped-down white pine or douglas fir Christmas tree could be $40, $60, even $100 depending on the size,” says an ERP representative, “If someone were to dedicate that same amount of money to planting trees, they could plant four-hundred, six-hundred, or even one thousand trees! Whole forests can be plants at a marginal cost.”

Eden Reforestation Projects has been active since 2004 and has maintained a cost per seedling at 10¢. Every $10 given to ERP plants 100 (one-hundred) trees. ERP nurseries are established with these funds in areas of Africa suffering from desertification and climate change due to deforestation.

Rachel Oliver of CNN recently reported on the relationship between poverty and climate change saying, “it's the world's poorest who are often put forward as the ones who are likely to feel the affects of climate change the most and are likely to be able to deal with them the least.”

ERP president Steve Fitch's recent research and experience strengthen the overlooked correlation between environmental damage and poverty, “Locals shared with me about how their crops were diminishing... I was taken to the Udo escarpment and I saw where a deluge had gouged the earth and had killed local villagers. This, I learned, was common and directly related to deforestation.”

This Holiday season, ERP is asking fellow activists and the eco-sensitive to consider the green impact the cost of their Christmas Tree could have on the deforested and desertified countries of Africa. “Trees for Trees” provides an opportunity for Christmas Tree shoppers to lighten their carbon footprint and participate in a new Holiday tradition that, as ERP says, “Heals lands AND lives.”

Donations can be made and more information found on their website, www.edenprojects.org, including a series of short educational film clips.

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For more information or to schedule an interview with an ERP representative, please contact Danica Northend at 626-395-7641 or mail Danica at Danica@chronicleproject.org.

Here's another nifty visual.