News: New tree planting website for airline passengers
Flights > News > # 898 (15/08/2006)
A new company has been set up to give air passengers the opportunity to combat the environmental damage caused by flying.
Treeflights.com gives passengers the chance to have a tree planted every time they fly. Treeflights is the brainchild of Ru Hartwell, a man with a passion for trees. The 48-year-old dad has lived with his family on the rugged slopes of the Cambrian Mountains in Mid-Wales for 20 years, and his eco-powered smallholding is now being covered with young trees as more airline passengers choose to take advantage of the service.
All passengers have to do is log onto the Treeflights website after they have made their booking, choose from a range of different tree species and then type in their flight number. For £10, the tree is tagged with their name and details and then planted on the rough Welsh mountainside.
Mr Hartwell said: “There’s no way of avoiding it, flying is inherently environmentally destructive and we shouldn’t do any more of it than we really have to. Planting a tree, on the other hand, is an ecologically constructive thing to do.” He added: “Trees use the sun’s energy to absorb CO2 and encourage biodiversity. They are also fantastic air purifiers. If you choose to fly, this is just a simple way to put something back.”
A range of deciduous species are offered, and customers are encouraged to visit the rapidly developing forest to watch their tree, or trees, grow over time
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Treeflights’ founder invited me to plant a tree for my next flight, so as I'm planning to head up to Scotland in a few days time, I decided to take him up on his offer.
I've commented elsewhere about my scepticism over some of the claims which are made about the environmental impacts of flights, but I also think that this is an issue that many airline executives would love to ignore if they could. The concept of Treeflights does not attempt to get into any complex calculations about carbon trading, and instead just chooses to make a simple plea to airline passengers who want to salve their conscience. There is plenty of room for debate amongst those who accept the principle of carbon offset about what a realistic "price" for such emissions might be – for example, if I wanted to play devil's advocate I could point out that, the website climatecare.org comes up with a "fee" of just 44p for a flight from Birmingham to Edinburgh.
I know full well that any self-respecting environmentalist will always argue that the Earth is priceless, and that carbon trading is merely a token gesture towards mitigating the environmental impacts of flying. However, there's something about this argument which I don't like, and I suppose this all boils down to the puritanical guilt trip which is trying to force us to stop taking flights. I would rather know that a certain figure could be reached, and that my journey was then fully economically and environmentally "paid-up", but there is a huge difference between the calculated pennies suggested by Climatecare for a return trip from the Midlands to Scotland and the £20 one would pay Treeflights.
Perhaps the principle is more important than the amount itself, and this is where the Treeflights concept is such a clever proposition. Rather than worry about any comparative figures, users are simply told a tree will be planted for them, and that they can visit the forest if they want to. Airline industry executives often like to point out that other forms of transport create substantial emissions as well, and I've yet to see any of the carbon offset sites provide an opportunity to cover the staggering amounts of electricity used by trains. Treeflights' stance on this issue is that they just want to keep things simple, so I suppose the opportunity to plant a shrub for a return train trip to the Lake District, or to grow a couple of blades of grass for each tube journey is never quite going to catch on.
The company is at pains to point out that what they do is anything but a quick fix - it can take over a hundred years for some deciduous trees to reach maturity, but on the other hand, users are also handing over money in trust that Treeflights will still be around after this time to ensure that the forest is properly managed.
The company founder says that he feels he can't trust the government to tax aviation properly, but I can assure him that I have every confidence that our money grabbing Chancellor will do just that, and more! (Although in saying that, Gordon Brown was the man who cut Air Passenger Duty from £10 to £5) Yet, I'm sure we would all agree that any of these proposed aviation taxes, or the current fuel taxes, would always be much more welcome if we are actually knew that they were going towards some form of environmental benefit. Unfortunately, the tax issue might well still be a sticking point for the frequent traveller. As long as carbon offset schemes remain voluntary, most of the current programmes are effectively asking people to buy a tree on somebody else's land, and this is currently seen by the government as a VAT-able purchase, rather than a charitable donation. As a general rule, people who take regular flights regularly tend to be in the higher income bracket, meaning that these voluntary contributions would already have been subject to 40% income tax, which could be reclaimed if they were made to a registered charity.
There are, of course, many charities which work in the field of environmental conservation, with organisations such as Rainforest Concern doing some excellent work to help keep what's left of the Amazon and the world’s other great forests intact. Yet this too is an immensely complex proposition, not to mention the fact that if anyone really did want to get interested in visiting such a scheme, they would end up generating a whole load of carbon emissions to get there! That's why I think this kind of scheme has lots of potential to grow, as £10 is enough to be noticed, but not too much to hurt, and a noticeable difference could be made to a forest near you.
