by To help fight climate change, many people have taken up planting trees. From October 25th to December 4th, 17,306,361 trees have been planted globally by #TeamTrees. NCC’s Good Growers Club will be taking their challenge by planting 100 trees.
#TeamTrees has been started by YouTuber Mr. Beast, who’s well known for giving away money and expensive products to his friends and strangers through challenges or business ideas. He partnered with Mark Rober, another YouTuber known for doing scientific experiments that he creates, and the Arbor Day Foundation.
A way to celebrate Mr. Beast reaching 20 million subscribers, a fan had challenged him to plant 20 million trees. In the video, ‘Planting 20,000,000 Trees, My Biggest Project Ever!’ he had planted 2,000 trees with the help of Mark Rober and put the challenge for others to donate $1 to plant one tree or to plant one themselves.
Planting trees is one of the many ways to help fight climate change. Trees not only help to give homes to many animals but they take in carbon dioxide.
“A new tree won’t be able to take in a lot of carbon dioxide as an older one would,” Kelly Allen said.
It’s why Good Growers Club has taken on the 100 tree challenge for next semester. Allen is the adviser of the Good Growers Club, English professor, and the coordinator of East 40 Community Garden. Allen has been a professor at NCC for 11 years and coordinator for 8 years.
The Good Growers Club is a student gardening club, created by students around the same time the East 40 was. Their semester goal changes every year depending on their project. One of their new projects is to plant 100 trees in the East Garden and off Green Pond Road, which will be diverse and native to the region. The project will be taking place in the Spring of 2020.
“This is a chance to improve community relations with nature,” Allen says.
The idea came from a woman who gifted 100 trees for her son’s marriage. She had sought out the Growers Club for their help in the project. The club is still needs funding for the big project while also working on protecting the trees that are already planted.
“We have to maintain our focus on trees already here. Some trees only grow 2 feet a year and we have to protect old ones to better fight climate change,” Allen said.
Anita Forrester is also the adviser of the Climate Action Network. They held an event on November 21 on ‘Climate Reality’. For every person that attended, a tree was planted. This was a collaboration with The Climate Reality Project and One Tree Planted. One Tree Planted, a nonprofit environmental organization working on reforestation projects in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Trees planted through One Tree rebuild wildlife habitat, restore land, create jobs and more. Students can contact Forrester or Allen for more information on how they can help or donate to the cause. Students can also go to teamtrees.org to donate $1 to plant a tree.
