Trees for a healthier living: GentleWays’ commitment
GentleWays for Our Planet is committed to planting one million trees by 2030. With our supporters and in partnership with Ecology Ottawa, we aim to have those million trees thrive in various spaces in Ontario, with a focus on Ottawa! Reforestation creates so many ecological and community benefits. Trees are the beautiful pillars of life on Earth: cleaning the air we breathe, cooling down our cities and providing homes for countless people and animals.
Neighborhoods with healthy tree populations are even shown to have less incidences of violence. In the context of increasing climate threats, Dan Marinigh of Otonabee Conservation explains that “every tree makes a difference in mitigating climate change”. According to Marinigh, “the average tree sequesters 220-225 kg of carbon over an 80 year period”. This means that as we continue to passionately support tree planting projects, we are protecting not only our communities but also the entire planet.
Recognizing these values, the Canadian government has launched last year an exciting initiative to plant 2 billion trees over the next 10 years to help restore degraded ecosystems. This renewed forest cover will be essential for Canada’s long term vision for a sustainable future. GentleWays for OurPlanet has explored over the past several months partnership opportunities with the vision of planting a very large number of trees under this initiative. We’re still studying our options and learning along the way about new and innovative planting methods such as the Miyawaki forest. This method, being implemented so far in Kingston, Cornwall and Ottawa, enables forestation and eco-system restoration within shorter periods of time compared to traditional planting methods.
In the meantime we offer our supporters two easy ways of planting trees: One via the app, i4ThePlanet, and the second through our tree planting events, which we will start this coming fall, as outlined below.
Planting trees through the app: i4ThePlanet
Through a creative and simple new mobile app called i4ThePlanet, users can record and redeem their daily ecological actions to plant real trees! From a catalogue of 122 GHG reducing, pro-environmental actions under six categories, users canselect and complete whatever actions they want to perform everyday and collect stars. Those stars can be redeemed to contribute to real trees planted in Ottawa at the low price of 1,75$ each. These trees are given away by Ecology Ottawa every year, to home owners in Ottawa. In 2021, Ecology Ottawa gave away 15,000 trees that were planted on privately owned lands to help rebuild Ottawa tree canopy. The Emerald Ash Borer has killed 25% of existing trees in Ottawa over the past few years!
You can download the i4ThePlanet here.
New tree planting events in Ottawa starting in the fall of 2022
We’re thrilled to share that starting in the fall of 2022, GentleWays will be organizing tree planting events with various cultural groups and new Canadians in Ottawa to help rebuild Ottawa’s tree canopy. We support planting equity and will plant trees in neighborhoods where trees are needed the most. In our first event, on September 24th, 2022, we will plant 125 trees with the help of volunteers and the assistance of Trees Canada.
We’re delighted to support our dear City add a naturalized forest to the Neil Nesbitt Park in Barrhaven. Barrhaven area was severely affected recently by a storm that destroyed thousands of trees. GentleWays for OurPlanet is proud to do our part in rebuilding Ottawa’s tree canopy. Follow us on IG for more updates on this project.
We are grateful to Nature Canada and Sustainable Capacity Foundation for their support with grant money and advice that helped us make these tree planting events a reality.
Planting trees is one the three big goals that we support to help restore balance to nature. It’s fun, ecological, and affordable way of showing our caring for the environment!
