Two Essex pubs pledge to plant trees for every hot drink sold
The initiative has been launched by The Oakman group, which owns The Anchor at Hullbridge and Kingâs Head in Chipping Ongar.
Customers of two Essex pubs can contribute to the fight against climate change by simply buying a hot drink.
The Oakman Group, which owns The Anchor at Hullbridge and Kingâs Head in Chipping Ongar, have pledged to plant a tree for every hot drink they sell.
Alex Ford is their managing director:: "One of our values is sustainability, We wanted to help tackle climate change and searched about for a partner to do that. That's when we came across Tree Nation, a non-profit organisation that has about a 103 different reforestation projects around the globe. We thought we could do something cool with them."
In support of this aim, every time a customer purchases a hot drink at one of their establishments, a tree will be planted in nominated plantations across Tanzania and Madagascar, two countries heavily impacted by climate change.
Mr Ford explains why they wanted to engage in reforestation: "The carbon reduction with each tree planted is 24 kilograms, which coincidentally, is the amount of daily carbon emission caused by a person in the UK. It will nicely offset someone's day if they come and have some coffee with us.
"We recognise that just offsetting the carbon you use is not the long-term answer, but it's a good way to start the day. It'll give people a chance to then take their own steps to help reduce their emissions instead of cancelling out what they cause themselves."
So what are their objectives with the project?
"We want to plant a million trees a year. That's our goal. We also want to continue and ramp it up, and hopefully create a buzz within our industry and inspire our competitors to do similar things.
"It's the only idea and promotion of ours that we want our competitors to steal because even though sustainability offers a competitive advantage, we all need to contribute to stop climate change
We'd also love to inspire our local communities in Hullbridge and Chipping Ongar to get involved as well."