21 November is National Tree Day, created to celebrate the importance that these living beings have had and continue to have for life on Earth. But what can we do to help them? Go back to being children and get our hands dirty with soil, for example. But if that isn't an option, no problem: there are alternatives.
Trees were our first home. Today they continue to be a refuge for countless animals and are indispensable for human survival too. For this reason, in 2013 the Italian government established National Tree Day, celebrated every year on 21 November. It is an opportunity to plant new trees and to rediscover the woods and green areas of one's local area and learn to protect them.
Simply protecting trees that are already alive will help reduce CO2 emissions by 7 billion tonnes per year by 2030: keeping these green areas intact would be equivalent to suddenly removing 1.5 billion diesel-powered cars from the roads. This is according to a study by Nature Conservancy, an organisation dedicated to environmental protection: forest conservation is, after all, one of the most effective and straightforward natural methods in the fight against climate change.
The importance of trees is also evident in everyday life: they reduce noise pollution, mitigate wind, give us coolness in summer and shelter us from cold air in winter. This translates into energy savings — and therefore financial savings — for homes.
Setting all that aside, can you imagine a world without trees? Our picnics would never be the same, the colours of autumn would disappear, going to forage for mushrooms or gather chestnuts in the woods would become impossible, and no child would ever again feel the thrill of building a treehouse.
There are many ways to protect trees. And for some of them, all it takes is a click.
It is with the creation of a new urban woodland in Florence that the Salvatore Ferragamo Group, a symbol of Made in Italy and strongly committed to sustainability, is celebrating National Tree Day. It is called Parco delle Idee and was established at the Polo scientifico di Sesto Fiorentino in collaboration with LifeGate and Carbonsink. It is composed of around two hundred native plants including field maple, holm oak and ash, and is intended to be a venue for recreational and educational activities aimed at schools, as well as a means of improving air quality and enhancing local biodiversity.
Impatto Zero is LifeGate's project that calculates, reduces and offsets the CO2 emissions generated by the activities of individuals and organisations, events and products, companies and bodies, through the creation and protection of growing forests. Among the various options, you can choose Zero Impact® Web to reduce and offset the emissions produced by your own blog, website or company portal. Browsing the internet does, in fact, consume energy: data processing centres use around 40 billion kilowatt-hours per year, a figure that is set to increase. To put this into perspective, consider that a data centre operating at 4 megawatts (the largest search engine's is 10) can consume up to 57 barrels of oil per day.
First of all, there are various steps that can be taken to reduce the emissions produced while browsing. To offset the environmental impact of your own website, you can join Zero Impact® Web and contribute to the creation and protection of the Siro Negri woodland in the Parco del Ticino, in the province of Pavia. This is a strict nature reserve, where human access is permitted only for educational or research purposes, and which is home to trees such as the pedunculate oak (a large species of oak), the black locust and various species of poplar, as well as shrubs such as hazel and hawthorn.
Alternatively, with LifeGate it is possible to adopt a sapling along the Naviglio Grande in Milan and dedicate it to someone special. Companies can do this too, demonstrating their commitment to protecting the environment. In this way, you join the Km verde project, which, in collaboration with the Consorzio di bonifica est Ticino Villoresi, is working to restore the Naviglio Grande through the planting of hundreds of new trees and hydraulic remediation. This is one of Milan's most distinctive locations, and it is also home to many varieties of native shrubs such as hawthorn, blackthorn and dog rose.
Just at the start of this month, the largest tropical reforestation project in history was announced: 73 million trees are to be planted in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest over the next six years. It is wonderful news with which to celebrate the 21 November holiday. In the meantime, however, we can start with small things. 2017 was a difficult year for the trees of our country, decimated by fires and drought. Let's take care of them, just as we take care of our seedlings that bring colour to balconies and gardens.
