"Tree by Tree" - that was NIKIN's motto right from the start. And now, almost 3½ years later, a few planted trees have already become half a million. Thanks to your help, we have reached another incredible milestone!
"Tree by Tree" - that was NIKIN's motto right from the start. And now, almost 3½ years later, a few planted trees have already become half a million. Thanks to your help, we have reached another incredible milestone!
A single tree planted does not change the world overnight. But half a million trees planted over a period of more than 3½ years makes a big difference. And that is exactly what we have now achieved. The half-million mark has been broken and we are proud to have made the world a little greener with so many trees planted. But we are not thinking of stopping yet, on the contrary. We are already aiming for the million mark!
The 500,000th tree planted in Lenzburg
By reaching 500,000 trees, we have reached a milestone, so we want to give special significance to this event and the 500,000th tree. For this reason, we have ceremoniously planted a tree at our home - in Lenzburg - to commemorate this success and, above all, our mission: Tree by tree, we want to make our planet greener. The tree is a Norway maple, which we duly hoisted into the ground at Markus-Roth-Platz in Lenzburg together with the town of Lenzburg.
How can you imagine half a million trees?
Half a million trees - that is a dimension that one cannot even imagine so precisely. To put it into perspective, you can imagine the following: There are about 535 million trees in the whole of Switzerland. If we were to plant all of these 500,000 trees in Switzerland, that would amount to about 0.1% of the total number of trees. A small number? That is deceptive, because half a million trees are equivalent to more than 16,000 football pitches. And when you consider that an area seven times the size of Switzerland is destroyed every year, every tree planted makes a difference. The important thing, however, is to know where and how to plant trees. Because only a small part of the trees we plant grow in Switzerland. The majority were planted where they were urgently needed.
Where are our trees planted?
Indiscriminately planting trees is neither sensible nor sustainable. It is better to leave that to our foresters or, like us, to an organisation that works for forest reforestation. Knowing that there are places in the world that desperately need reforestation, NIKIN has trusted the non-profit organisation OneTreePlanted since the beginning. They decide where in the world the trees are needed most and urgently - whether that is Australia after the forest fires, South America or Africa. For example, they have already planted over 5.7 million trees worldwide since 2015. So that NIKIN could get their own impression of the work of OneTreePlanted, they visited Nicholas Hänny and Robin Gnehm themselves in Canada and the USA in 2018 and 2019 and planted trees with them.
Why trees are so important
Trees and their functions are vital for humans as well as for animals, and they are actually small - or sometimes quite large - masterpieces of nature. One of their most important tasks is to clean the air. For example, they extract the greenhouse gasCO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into oxygen. As a "green lung", a single tree can absorb an average of up to 5 kilograms of air pollutants per year and produce 130 kilograms of oxygen at the same time. An impressive achievement for a single tree. What entire forests can achieve, on the other hand, is particularly evident in the event of natural disasters, because forests literally stand in the way of avalanches, rockfalls and landslides, thus preventing major damage. In addition, the forest soil filters and stores incoming rainwater, which plays an important role in the use of drinking water.
Apart from that, the forest provides a home for numerous animals and plants, is a source of food and protection at the same time - from insects and spiders to birds and mammals. For us humans, the forest offers a place of recreation where we can relieve stress and unwind. But trees also provide us with protection from the sun in summer. A service that is provided to us free of charge.
Switzerland as a land of trees
Relaxing in the forest is easy, especially in Switzerland, where 1/3 of the country is covered by forest. Everywhere there is a place for them and the opportunity to put down proverbial roots. Spruces, firs and beeches are the most common trees in Switzerland. And while trees in our country live to be 100 years old on average, the record is held by a yew tree that can boast 1500 years. The largest tree in Switzerland, a Douglas fir, stands in Madiswil in Bern and is about 61 metres high. Compared to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it would barely reach above the first floor.
If the Swiss forest were divided equally among the country's population, each inhabitant would be responsible for about 75 trees. And suddenly the relationship with our forests would feel a bit more intimate, especially as it would allow us to visit, name or hug our own trees. Also, the respect and gratitude we should pay to our trees would probably be greater this way. So it is all the more important to protect and appreciate nature and our trees. After all, cutting down a tree only takes a fraction of the time it takes for a tree to regain its majestic size.
You can help to plant trees so that we can soon break the million mark!
