Nottingham-based Midland Regional Printers (MRP) has partnered with Grow My Tree to support its work to tackle climate change by planting trees.
Grow My Tree is an climate-tech venture that works with organisations in the Global South – where the ecological, economic and social impacts of climate change are highest – to supply and plant trees. Global South is a socio-economic and political term that broadly comprises countries in the regions of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, parts of Asia and areas of Oceania. Most of humanity resides in the Global South and many countries in this grouping are characterised by low incomes, dense populations, poor infrastructure, and often political or cultural marginalization.
Grow My Tree works to ensure every tree planting is fair, sustainable and certified for full traceability. Only trees native to the Global South area with high survival rates are planted, to help protect local flora and fauna. The trees are planted in collaboration with local farmers, generating income and supporting local economies.
MRP’s partnership with Grow My Tree is the latest in a long line of steps that the company is taking to improve its environmental credentials and help tackle climate change. MRP has held ISO 14001 Certification for its Environmental Management System for the last four years and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accreditation for the last two. The latter serves to demonstrate that all virgin paper and packaging materials used for printing by the company come from sustainable sources. Further, for the previous 10 years MRP has supported the World Land Trust by buying an acre of land every year, to help protect land and stop habitat loss.
MRP sales and marketing director Catherine Tew commented, ‘Sustainability has always been at the very heart of what we do here at MRP. We’re on a mission to help fight climate change, which is why we’re very proud to be partnering with Grow My Tree. We now plant a tree for every order our customers place with us – large or small – and to date, we’ve planted 4668 trees and neutralised a massive 103,000kg of carbon dioxide.’
MRP customers are to be sent a personalised certificate at the end of 2023, confirming how many trees they’ve helped plant.
Ms Tew continued, ‘Our aim is to plant at least another 4000 trees this year. As well as planting one tree for each customer order, we’ve also set up a monthly subscription with Grow My Tree to make sure a minimum number of trees always get planted every month.’
‘There are lots of other things we’re doing to mitigate our environmental impact,’ she added. ‘That might be through changing our supply chain processes to reducing waste, setting up recycling schemes or investing in eco-friendly technologies. For example, we’ve recently replaced our compressed air system, which has cut our carbon emissions for this by an amazing 57.3% – the equivalent of 26,874kg a year. Most of our lighting is now low-energy LED and we’re currently in the process of ordering solar panels so we can generate our own clean electricity.
‘MRP’s commitment to the environment is something we’re very passionate about as a team. It’s increasingly central to how we operate, and we’ll continue working to find new and innovative ways to keep reducing our carbon footprint and overall impact on the environment, however and wherever we can within our business.’
