Trees to be planted on behalf of OR in Tacoma’s Puget Creek watershed.
Seattle, WASH. – This year, through an innovative Pacific Northwest program, the outdoor product manufacturer Outdoor Research will plant 234 native conifer trees south of its headquarters in Seattle, an amount that – over their lifetime – will sequester the company’s 2012 carbon emissions.
As a company fully committed to outdoor adventure and wild places, Outdoor Research is also committed to identifying its impacts on the natural world – including global warming – and taking voluntary steps toward addressing those impacts. The company’s tree-planting effort will be enacted through the conservation organization Forterra’s Carbon Capturing Companies (C3) Program.
“Global warming is a difficult issue, and no one thing is going to solve it. One key step forward is to take a measurable, direct and voluntary action,” said Outdoor Research CEO Dan Nordstrom, who is also a board member of Forterra. “The C3 Program allows us, along with other steps we are taking internally, to take direct action by assessing our carbon footprint and work to sequester those carbon emissions. Tree-planting initiatives, unlike more indirect credit-based programs, are looking like one of the more effective weapons in the fight against global warming.”
Outdoor Research measures its carbon emissions by taking into account factors such as energy use, domestic manufacturing, global shipping, business travel and employee commuting.
A primary tenet of the C3 Program is the chemical process of sequestration, whereby oxygen-emitting trees are planted in public spaces such as parks, protected lands and other natural areas to sequester carbon emissions.
For the 2012 program-year, the 13 Seattle-area C3 program participants set a collective carbon sequestration goal of over 20,000 tons of CO2 equivalent, the standard measure of greenhouse-gas pollution. Other Seattle-area businesses participating in the program include the band Pearl Jam, the Sounders FC, the Seahawks, the Seattle Mariners and the Seattle Aquarium.
In addition to helping companies reduce their impact, the C3 program helps improve urban parks and natural spaces that beautify and strengthen communities. These green spaces help watersheds by reducing soil erosion, water pollution and stormwater runoff; cool cities by reducing heat sinks; provide sound buffers for large urban areas; improve air quality and salmon habitat and much more.
The Outdoor Research-associated trees will be planted at Puget Creek, an urban watershed area in Tacoma. Outdoor Research will continue to work with the Forterra C3 Program to sequester its annual carbon emissions for 2013.