ADVICE: Green my ride (part two)

An Oxfam Volunteer has got in touch to point out that you can also buy trees through the Oxfam Unwrapped scheme.

An interesting observation: you can use any of the carbon emission calculators mentioned in the first part of this article to find out how many trees you need to plant and can then plant your trees with anyone you like.

Back to the Oxfam Unwrapped scheme. For £16 you can plant 50 trees! And you can plant trees such as juniper, guava and papaya which help people's livelihoods in a very real way.

Fruit trees give people a crop which they can eat or sell.

Other types of tree help stop soil erosion, provide timber for building, provide firewood and give shade.

How does this gift help people in the poverty trap? Well, this is what Juan Manuel Serrano of Chalatenango, El Salvador thinks:

“We grow and sell ornamental plants as well as fruit trees and trees for wood.

We have grown 20,000 trees for reforesting the local area.

We can sell the trees and plants we grow in the nursery and that gives us employment and an income for the co-operative.”

Sounds almost perfect to us! Offset Carbon emissions PLUS help people trapped in poverty take care of themselves.

Go to Oxfam Unwrapped to find out more.

Technorati tags:
cityhippy
car
carbon neutral
CO2
Shopping
Oxfam
Charity