Blog — 1% for the Planet

Posted by Pollyanna Stevens

In 2022 we celebrated our 25th anniversary and set ourselves the goal of planting 2500 trees to mark the occasion. It took a little bit longer than we expected, but we're so proud to announce that we've finally reached our target!

Take a look around the stunning Glen Affric where our trees have been planted here.

We've been blown away by the generosity of our customers, suppliers, agents, friends and family in helping us reach this goal. A special thank you to Alpha Colour Printers and Fenner Paper who donated an incredible 100 trees each.

Our trees were planted through the amazing charity Trees for Life, who are working on restoring the once-extensive Caledonian forest in the Scottish Highlands. Visit our grove page on their website here to find out more. We'd love to keep the donations going so please do add a tree if you're able to.

Our donations were made through our membership to 1% for the Planet. You can read about some of the other incredible environmental charities we've donated to on this blog.

We are delighted to have created a grove with Trees for Life.

Trees for life are rewilding the Scottish Highlands by enabling the restoration of the globally unique Caledonian Forest, which once covered much of Scotland. Their ongoing projects involve planting trees, reintroducing wildlife and providing rewilding training.

Our grove currently contains 231 trees, which will be carefully planted in protected sites in Glen Affric in the Scottish Highlands, often considered Scotland's most beautiful glen. The trees will be a healthy mixture of native species, including Scots pine, oak, hazel and aspen, which create homes for wildlife and forests for the future.

You can visit our grove here, and we would be delighted if you would like to help Trees for Life with their work by planting a tree, which you can do at the bottom of our grove page.

We are happy to have made our latest 1% for the Planet donation to City to Sea, a charity based in our hometown, Bristol.

They are an environmental organisation who provide communities worldwide with practical solutions to stop plastic pollution. The charity’s positive and playful attitude makes their initiatives approachable and achievable, encouraging everyone to take small steps which result in big change.

As we become more and more aware of the shocking amounts of plastic building up in our oceans, City to Sea aims to stop plastic at source by reducing demand. As well as believing in the power of the individual consumer and helping everyday activists to challenge the system, they are also behind large scale campaigns pushing for change in government legislation and calling out big companies to face their plastic problems.

Their #SwitchTheStick campaign resulted in all major UK retailers announcing they would only sell biodegradable paper stemmed cotton buds rather than plastic. This was followed by the British government completely banning plastic cotton buds as well as stirrers and straws.

City to Sea have successfully campaigned for plastic-free period products to be offered to schools as part of the government’s period poverty scheme. They have met with period product brands, retailers and manufacturers, encouraging them to remove single-use plastic and add more reusables to their ranges.

Cutting out as much plastic as possible from our business has been a priority for the past couple of years. In January we were really pleased to send out our first trade catalogue with a 100% plastic-free and fully recyclable card and stationery range, following us designing new paper packaging for our mini card packs. However there is always more that can be done and we will continue to critically evaluate our company from an environmental and ethical perspective.

Please take a look at City to Sea’s website to find out more about their work, how to get involved with their campaigns, and see what you can do to reduce everyday plastic consumption.

Our most recent donation through our membership to 1% for the Planet was to TreeSisters, a social change and reforestation charity.

TreeSisters fund tropical reforestation projects across 12 locations in Brazil, Borneo, Cameroon, India, Kenya, Mozambique, Madagascar, Nepal and West Papua. Their reforestation projects are ethical and community led, they expand natural forest cover and aim to avoid further deforestation.

So far they have funded the planting of over 15 million trees, and their goal is to plant 1 billion trees annually. We are delighted that our donation will directly fund the planting of 875 trees.

TreeSisters stood out to us as their projects support local communities and focus on gender parity and the participation of women. They explore what it would be like if there were more woman taking leadership roles in respect to the environment, and they provide training and support to encourage this.

Their work combines four of today’s big issues: gender, climate, behaviour change and ecological restoration. You can read more about TreeSisters’ projects, their values and how to support them here.