Why we started Trees Not Tees
A few months ago, my co-founder Jim and I started a new project called Trees Not Tees to do our bit in the fight against climate change. Trees Not Tees makes it easy for event organisers to offer participants the option of planting a tree rather than receiving a T-shirt they won’t wear. Jim is an ultra-runner and he’s been frustrated for years by the dozens of race T-shirts he has piled up in his wardrobe, so now we’re doing something about it.
Trees Not Tees can displace millions of T-shirts per year in the UK alone, and has two main benefits:
- Reducing the number of T-shirts being made, therefore significantly saving on water and energy consumption (it takes the same amount of water to produce a single cotton T-shirt as a person drinks in 2.5 years!), and limiting the amount of unwanted stuff going to landfill.
- Fighting climate change. Planting trees is one of the very best things we can do for the environment; together we can plant millions of trees, grow whole new forests, and take significant amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Why do trees matter in the fight against climate change?
The climate crisis is real, and we have only a short window in which to act. According to The Paris Agreement we need to keep “well below two degrees” of warming to avoid its most disastrous effects. What many people don’t realise is that even if we massively reduce emissions now (something that we have a very poor track record of doing — countries aren’t even close to hitting targets) this still won’t be enough.
We need to actively remove 10–15 gigatons of CO2/yr from the atmosphere by 2050. That’s roughly the same as what the whole of Slovenia emits per year. We can’t rely on decarbonisation alone.
So how can we remove that much CO2 from the atmosphere?
“There is a magic machine that sucks carbon out of the air, costs very little, and builds itself. It’s called… a tree.” (video by Greta Thunberg & George Monbiot.)
Trees absorb CO2 from the air and lock it away as carbon in their wood as they grow. Trees are one of our most scalable and cost-effective ways to reduce the CO2 in our atmosphere and reverse climate change. We need far more trees and far more funding to make this happen.
We are planting whole new forests right here in the UK
We own 430 acres of land in Scotland, just south of Glasgow, and we’re planting a mixed deciduous forest just like the native one would have been. We’ve got a planting plan approved by Scottish Natural Heritage, and we always plant the right tree in the right place. Once we’ve planted a new forest here, we’ll do the same thing again, and again, and again.
I think a lot of people feel helpless in the face of the climate crisis — I know I certainly did. But we really can make a difference. Together we can plant millions of trees, soon, and have a measurable impact. This isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s real and it’s here now, and it really will make a difference.
If you’re interested in learning more or you want to offer #treesnottees at your event, email me at hello@treesnottees.com.
