Here’s a fun fact – you don’t have to be a big business to make a big difference. You can be a small business, even a tiny one, and still make a significant positive contribution to the environment. We already know that small businesses are vital for local economies, that they keep money in the community and support local interests in myriad different ways. They also provide opportunities for entrepreneurs, create meaningful jobs, and on the whole give greater job satisfaction than large corporations. Small business is powerful. The key to making an environmental difference has nothing to do with size, and everything to with taking the right action, at the right time, with the right partners.
We have a handful of small businesses who purchase trees when they can. Small business owners are masters of ingenuity when it comes to incorporating tree planting into their business practices. Never underestimate small business. When it comes to reducing carbon footprints, they are a climate force to be reckoned with.
Dougal – back on the family farm!
Over the course of the year, twenty small businesses have partnered with Fifteen Trees to plant between 15-90 trees each. A huge thank you goes out to the following;
Ellen Burns from We Bar None and Angela and Scott Semple from Compass Financial Group, for purchasing 15 trees. Leona Lees from Claymore Thistle, an Australian relocation company, for purchasing 26 trees to help reduce the carbon footprint of relocating a family from Seattle, USA to Perth, AUS.
Keith Rhodes at Clips That Sell (30 trees), Alison Barnes (30 trees) at the Glen Davis Hotel and Deakin Uni (30 trees) who have had these trees planted as a thank you to Chris Hickey, Ellen Moon, Trish Livingston, Jimmy Buck, Judy Currey, Matthew Clarke and Josipa Crnic.
Paul Mason from Cyndeo. (45 trees).
The team at Memories (50 trees), Colin Petrie from Proact Business Accounting (50 trees) and Richard Finlay–Jones from EcoEnviro (also 50 trees)
Emma and Leigh Ericksen at Stoke Design Co. (60 trees) and Mike Cairnduff from The Helpful Panda. (60 trees). Lucile Warwick from Plenty Valley Christian College didn’t want ‘the environment to pay the cost of their festival’ that was held earlier this year and so we have planted 60 trees to reduce the carbon footprint of their festival and art show.
Michael Dixon at Mykel Dixon (90 trees) and the Ballarat Tech School (90 trees).
The trees (551) were planted in the Northern Grampian Region of Victoria by a number of local Landcare groups. These trees have contributed to a wide range of regeneration and habitat projects. These projects will make an enormous difference to the ecosystems they become part of.
It might seem as though sponsoring a handful of trees won’t achieve much but when you realise there are many others out there also taking the same action … your contribution becomes part of a bigger picture. We’re all in this together. You don’t need a multi-million-dollar turnover, or ten thousand employees, or a warehouse the size of the MCG. You just need the desire to do good, and trust that others are doing the same.
Collective action can absolutely move mountains.
Dougal has moved back onto the family farm this year, attracted by the prospect of farming in a regenerative way that reduces synthetic inputs and fosters natural systems. Part of the plan is to have a greater percentage of the farm under native vegetation to help increase biodiversity and the many benefits it brings. Shelter belts of native trees and shrubs are to be established and the costs and labour associated with such an undertaking are not insignificant. The support of Fifteen Trees has helped to make this task possible particularly when plans to have friends from Melbourne help in the big task of planting, guarding and watering the trees had to be abandoned when the Covid restrictions were introduced.
The trees generously provided by Fifteen Trees are the first to be planted for some years and will provide many benefits for the farm. They help to create a wind break for those chilling southerlys and they link the river with an older line of trees. They have been planted in rows of 5 so will provide enough density to offer shelter for the smaller birds. The diversity of species will mean there is a more consistent food source as different plants flower at differing times of the year.
Andrew Borg | President | Buloke and Northern Grampians Landcare (BNG).
If you are also interested in how your business and Fifteen Trees could work together, contact Melinda at <[email protected]> and ask for a proposal that will fit in with your business model.
Writer – Sarah Hart.
Sarah is an artist whose passions include the stories and experiences of women and narrative driven creative work. Her aim is to delight, to reveal glimpses of everyday beauty, and to celebrate flights of the ordinary. Sarah works across a range of media, with an abiding interest in pen and ink, mixed media and the human form. You can find Sarah here.
