It’s been a tough year for the environment. Like many of you, we have been profoundly affected by the fires in the Amazon and dismayed by the Trump administration’s actions in the US. However, we’ve also been encouraged by the actions of Greta Thunberg and others who’ve been fighting to both change minds and create a positive impact on increasingly critical environmental issues.
While a number of brands we admire have decided to sit out Black Friday, at Hund Hund we thought we’d do something a little different. As well as offering a discount to our customers to make our clothes a little more financially accessible (20% off our knitwear collection with code ‘PLANT2TREES’), we wanted to give you an opportunity to make a difference. We’ve decided that for each individual piece we sell on Black Friday, we will plant two trees on the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, in partnership with Plant for the Planet.
Founded in 2007, Plant for the Planet is a Munich-based NGO fighting the climate crisis through their ‘Trillion Tree Campaign’. Their mission is to plant an additional one trillion trees to the three trillion that currently exist globally. They believe that one trillion trees would be able to capture up to 25% of man-made carbon emissions each year. Hundreds of millions of years have blessed trees with an unbeatably efficient ability to remove harmful carbon from our atmosphere and output valuable oxygen. This was confirmed by a recent Oxford University study that concluded that planting trees is currently the most effective method of reducing CO2 already in the atmosphere.
More than simply their carbon-storing properties though, trees are also a super important part of the water cycle. By taking water out of the ground and releasing it into the atmosphere through a process called Evapotranspiration, trees are responsible for around 40% of all rainfall, serving the vital function of redistributing water throughout the environment. In many areas, trees are therefore essential for resisting soil degradation.
Another great thing about trees is their indirect contribution to reflecting solar radiation. Forests release a hydrocarbon called isoprene which enables the forming of special kinds of clouds that reflect the suns rays. This helps to balance out the planet’s temperature to a more manageable level. Effectively, the more trees we plant, the more we can counter the effects of global warming in this way.
Obviously, planting trees is not the panacea to all our environmental issues. We need to think more mindfully about what and how we consume. At Hund Hund, we work hard at maintaining a mindfulness of our social and environmental impact by not just searching for the cheapest options, but options which reflect our values. Although this is just a small gesture, we believe that it’s a positive one that leads us in the right direction towards a more carbon-neutral future.
Words by Ewan Waddell.
