Konica Minolta plants trees at Western Cape schools

According to Konica Minolta employees Carol Harris, Cape Town branch secretary, and Peter Gdanis, Paarl branch manager, FTFA selected Caravelle Primary School, Hillside Primary School, Wavecrest Primary School, Eisleben Road Primary School, Mboniselo Primary School and Langabuya Primary School to be the recipients of the indigenous and fruit trees.

Shade for children

"Konica Minolta employees got thoroughly involved with the planting of the trees," says Harris. "From here, the trees become the responsibility of the teachers, learners and caretakers; yet we will still remain involved, both with the schools and the community.

"The main purpose of indigenous or fruit trees is to provide shade for the school children, to sit and play beneath during our hot summer months, as well as their guardians as they wait to fetch the children. They will of course also beautify the school and its surroundings."

The partnership with FTFA began in 2008 when Konica Minolta contributed 4 100 trees to Orange Farm, a large informal settlement located about 45 kilometres from Johannesburg. As a result of the success of the project, and the need to offset more carbon dioxide emissions, the company committed to planting further trees in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Northern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Gauteng and Western Cape regions.

Many other benefits

The 17 678 trees have been distributed through FTFA's Trees for Homes initiative, a registered carbon offset programme under the Carbon Protocol of South Africa. By taking travel, electricity and paper usage into account, the FTFA online carbon calculator provides a high level estimation of a company's annual carbon footprint as well as the number of trees it will take to absorb that amount of carbon.

"As part of our corporate social investment initiative, we have committed to the FTFA Carbon Offset programme in an effort to further offset our carbon emissions and one of the best ways to do this is by planting trees. In addition to absorbing carbon dioxide, these trees provide many other environmental and social benefits such as preventing water run-off and erosion, settling the dust, providing shade and shelter, lessening noise and beautifying neighbourhoods," Alan Griffith, Konica Minolta South Africa MD added.

The trees will also be registered with the United Nations Billion Tree programme, which already has registered ten billion trees - more than one per person on the planet.