A positive month meant we were able to donate £90 to ‘One tree Planted’, planting 111 trees to the plantation in Rwanda. We have also donated £63 to The Ocean Cleanup Project, hepling their new System 03 clean the Caribbean seas and the Pacific ocean.
Every month we encourage customers to purchase our eco-friendly materials. However, if you are unable to, we will make a donation to either one of our two partnered charities instead.
ABOUT RWANDA
Rwanda’s forests support a wealth of biodiversity and natural resources but has been subject to deforestation for unsustainable large-scale agricultural practices. Smallholder farmers feel the impacts of that degradation and understand the importance of landscape restoration for water, energy and food security. This project will help a women’s cooperative, led by local farmer Agnes Uwifashije, to revive land in Mukura.
This community-led initiative will plant a variety of trees including Grevillea robusta, Markhamia lutea, Erythrina abyssinica, Myrianthus holstii, various species of Ficus or Fig, and the nitrogen-fixing fodder shrub Calliandra colthyrsus. Farmers will also plant avocado, lemon, and tree tomatoes for food security and income generation.
For this project, our amazing partners at ARCOS (Albertine Rift Conservation Society) will mentor and build the skills of 2,000 farmers to restore land while improving community livelihoods. Planting trees will help add nutrients to soil while controlling run-off and erosion. When properly managed, these trees will provide the local farmers with firewood, climbing bean poles, and fodder for their animals. For food security and income generation, farmers will plant avocado, lemon, and tree tomatoes.
By planting both native trees and fruit trees, local farmers can rehabilitate their land while creating a sustainable source of food & income. The local Gishwati-Mukura forests are home to rare species including the mountain gorilla, chimpanzee, and colobus monkey.
The Ocean Cleanup
This month The ocean Cleanups’ Interceptor 006 has successfully prevented around 3,000,000 kg of trash (and counting) from reaching the Caribbean Sea in the last five months. As the end of the flooding season in Guatemala approaches, we continue to capture and extract trash with every rainstorm.
System 03 has also completed its second full month in operation. This system is as wide as 5.5 Eiffel towers, a rubbish bag the size of 8.14 school buses and a cleaning capacity of 1 football pitch every 5 seconds!
What is System 03?
System 03 is a cleaning system which removes plastic from the ocean, designed, deployed and operated by The Ocean Cleanup. The system consists of a floating barrier approximately 2.2 km (1.4 miles) long, which is towed between two slow-moving vessels. This barrier suspends a screen extending 4 meters (13 feet) below the surface of the water, where most floating plastic is encountered.
System 03 is The Ocean Cleanup’s third iteration of cleaning technology and was deployed to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in August 2023 following testing with System 001 and the success of System 002, which extracted over 250,000 kg (620,000 lbs) of plastic from the GPGP between 2021 and 2023
