Our Environmental and Community Impact
Here at Planetwrapit, we pride ourselves on giving more to the planet than we take and every time you buy from us it helps us make more of an impact.
In 2022, thanks to your orders we managed to plant over 700 trees! For context, this number of trees potentially offsets up to 2,590 tonnes of CO2 which is amazing!
We still have a long way to go though - this year, we'd like to double the number of trees we plant.
Here we explain a little more about how we do things...
So how do we plant our trees?
We use a mixture of tree planting schemes so our donations can have a maximum benefit. Most of our trees are planted via One Tree Planted which is a not-for profit organisation who plants trees according to where they are most needed to boost biodiversity, regeneration and an environmental boost.
When you plant a tree via the checkout your donation is planted by One Tree Planted and is credited automatically to them from your order.
We also choose to plant trees which have a specific social, economic and environmental benefit. One of these schemes is in Madagascar and is managed by Earthly.org.
Madagascar Tree Planting Project - Over 400 trees planted by us, to date.
In Madagascar, forest restoration is a critical issue- the country has lost over 90% of its native forest cover. This is a huge loss for biodiversity, since approximately 75% of its species are not found anywhere else in the world. It is our responsibility to protect what is left and help to reforest areas that have been destroyed.
Mangroves are an excellent forest type for restoration- it not only stores more carbon than traditional forests, it also provides multiple benefits to coastal communities like storm protection, water filtration and livelihood generation. Each mangrove tree removes around 308kg of CO2 from the atmosphere over the course of its life-cycle (approximately 25 years).
In Maroalika, the mangrove forests are also favored by native bird species. Replanting the mangrove forests is expected to bring back the once abundant bird diversity, but also restore the soil in the region which has been heavily degraded from charcoal harvesting.
What is planted?
A mix of four different mangrove species are planted as well as at least 10% agroforestry trees to provide an additional source of income to the local people. The mangroves are planted directly from propagules, and Eden have discovered that mortality becomes irrelevant as natural regeneration occurs (after the inevitable loss of some propagules). Typically regeneration exceeds 200% of the original number of mangroves planted – we know, how cool is that!
Managing our Carbon Footprint and Reducing our 'Waste'
One area we feel really strongly about is reducing our carbon footprint where ever possible, for us part of that means reusing, recycling and gifting on everything we can.
One of our main items of 'waste' is the cardboard tubes that our big rolls of paper come with, I am proud to say we have NEVER needed to traditionally recycle any of the tubes we have left over - we have always found a second home for them!
Over the last couple of years we have gifted hundreds, possibly thousands of tubes to animal sanctuaries for enrichment activities, pet owners, schools and nurseries for craft activities, girl guides, forest schools and more!
Woodland Nurture Forest School turned our tubes into Paddington Bears and created a huge marble that ran through the forest!
Bassetlaw Museum regularly runs free activities for our local community during school holidays and is a regular recipient of our kraft paper and cardboard tubes. The tubes have been used for a Jack and the Beanstalk Activity day (see picture), rain-makers, castles and more.
The children also made some fabulous wrapping paper with our kraft paper offcuts!
Each year at Christmas we donate wrapping paper to as many not-for-profit organisations as we can, in 2022 we donated to several charities and schools to help them raise funds, wrap gifts and encourage smiles!
Our Packaging
It matters to us how we get your orders to you and the environmental impact of the journey.
We use 100% recyclable cardboard boxes and our own eco-friendly packaging tape, occasionally if we sending a large or heavy order we may use a reinforced packaging tape to ensure it gets to the recipient in the best condition possible.
We save and reuse old stock boxes for packaging, and we also save our paper off-cuts to wrap around our rolls for postal protection.
Sometimes boxes are too big or not suitable to use on our orders, these are saved up and advertised on our local free-cycle page for people who are moving house - they are always gratefully received and we are happy to gift them on!
If you have any questions please contact Rachael at hello@planetwrapit.co.uk.or alternatively, feel free to contact us on our Instagram or Facebook pages.