Planting trees

This week, we entered into an agreement with Tree Canada to become I believe the first Canadian print media publisher that plants more trees than it consumes.

Under our arrangement, we will plant a tree for every display advertiser in every issue of our publications. I estimate we will plant 80 or more trees per month. Our printers estimate that the newsprint we use to produce our newspapers consumes 11 trees per month. So, we'll end up contributing about 70 trees to the environment -- obviously something exceptional for a business that relies on the forests for its raw production material!

Michael Rosen, president of Tree Canada (treecanada.ca), says his organization plants trees in areas where conventional forestry stewardship programs don't operate. While forestry companies are required to replace their tree resources, they can't be expected to fill the void when natural disasters or non-forestry urban or industrial use decimates the Canada's woodlands. We'll have a general idea of where the trees are to be planted -- some will most likely be in the Sudbury, Ontario area, where a reclamation project is under-way in the area near Inco's nickel smelter.

This is obviously good news for the environment, but let us look at some of the other implications here.

• Our advertisers, without any effort, will contribute to solving the global warming problem -- every time the advertise, a tree is planted, capable of turning CO2 into Oxygen.
• We'll promote responsible, honest and effective environmental stewardship, both in our editorial columns, with free space advertising for Tree Canada and, most importantly, in the connection we will help make between Tree Canada and our advertisers (who will receive information about the Tree Canada initiative with every invoice.
• We are taking a leadership role in an important environmental area -- in a practical, as well as symbolic, way, we are turning our publishing enterprise into an environmental contributor rather than consumer.

On a marketing level, I think you can see how this helps our brand. I wish to thank Chase, in St. Catharines, for his initiative in introducing this idea. Sometime within the next year I hope to see some of the trees we are planting changing the environment in Northern Ontario.