Aldi has celebrated planting its 400,000th native Irish woodland tree today.
The event marks a milestone for the supermarket group, as it aims to plant one million native trees around Ireland by 2025, together with Green Belt forestry consultancy.
A tree planting with Ireland rugby star James Ryan took place today ahead of International Day of Forests on March 21.
Aldi claims planting a million trees will see more than 160,000 tonnes of carbon emissions removed from the atmosphere over a 100-year period. This equates to roughly 640 million kilometres driven by an average passenger vehicle (or the emissions from about 400 cars each year), 68 million litres of petrol consumed, or 20 billion smartphones charged, enough to charge all of Ireland’s smartphones almost 47 times over each year.
The initiative is in partnership with the Department of Agriculture’s Woodland Environment Fund (WEF) under which Irish businesses can partner with landowners and the department to establish new native woodlands – as opposed to non-native species such as sitka spruce. The Government’s target is to plant 22 million trees a year until 2040.
The Aldi project was launched by Group Managing Director Niall O’Connor, Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue and Minister of State Pippa Hackett in Aughrim, Co Wicklow last year.
To date, trees have been planted across nine counties in Ireland, including Kerry, Cork, Galway, Mayo, Meath, Kildare, Wicklow, Cavan and Limerick.
Speaking at the tree planting event, James Ryan said: “It’s fantastic that Aldi is supporting the environment and promoting local biodiversity through its tree planting commitment and I’m delighted to join the team here today in Kildare to mark the occasion.
"Planting 400,000 native Irish trees is a fantastic milestone, and it’s great to see Aldi is ahead of schedule in planting one million. We all have to play our part in reducing our carbon footprint and I commend the whole Aldi team for all their hard work."
