Twitter for Trees! UNEP to Plant 100,000 Trees for 100,000 Followers

The United Nations Environment Programme will be planting 100,000 trees for 100,000 Twitter followers in honor of World Environment Day, June 5th 2009. The effort supports the Billion Trees Campaign’s goal to plant a total of seven billion trees – one for every person on the planet – by year’s end.

Add your voice and twitter loudly! Follow www.twitter.com/UNEPandYou, retweet the message and help get as many people involved as possible.

From UNEP:

World Environment Day (WED) was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.

Commemorated yearly on 5 June, WED is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action. The day’s agenda is to:

1. Give a human face to environmental issues;
2. Empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development;
3. Promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues;
4. Advocate partnership which will ensure all nations and peoples enjoy a safer and more prosperous future.

The theme for WED 2009 is ‘Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change’. It reflects the urgency for nations to agree on a new deal at the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen some 180 days later in the year, and the links with overcoming poverty and improved management of forests.

Your planet needs you! Find more ways to get involved at the UNEP World Environment Day website.

Link [UNEP]

Figs & Ginger Earth Day Giveaway

Planning on planting a tree for Earth Day? (Of course you are, right?!) Figs & Ginger, who create the most adorable handmade eco-friendly jewelry ever, want to thank you for helping out the earth. Take a photo or video of yourself planting a tree and send it over – the first 50 people to do so will receive a limited edition Tree Necklace PLUS either a pair of Fawn Earrings or a Fawn Tie Tack.

Earth Day Giveaway from Figs & Ginger! from Figs & Ginger on Vimeo.

Entries must be submitted by May 6th at the latest, but you’d better act fast – you don’t want to miss out on such a gorgeous giveaway! Email your photos or video to EarthDay@FigsandGinger.com. You can also upload the video to Youtube or Vimeo and e-mail them with the link, or send a link to your blog with the picture, or twitpic it on Twitter to , @FigsandGinger. Remember to include your name & shipping address.

Check out all the rules at the Figs & Ginger website, and take a look around while you’re there!

Link [Figs & Ginger]

Trade Your Stuff and Plant a Tree for Earth Day with Swaptree

This Earth Day, swap your old books, CDs, movies and video games for new stuff – and have a tree planted for every transaction you make – on Swaptree.com. Swaptree, a free online trading service, has teamed up with the Nature Conservancy’s ‘Plant a Billion Trees’ initiative with a goal of 10,000 trades completed and 10,000 trees planted on Earth Day 2009.

And, hey – swapping stuff instead of buying new is the ultra green way to shop, and it gives you control over what you get in return, too. Here’s how it works:

Members simply list the items that they are trading and the items they want, and Swaptree’s two and three-way trade algorithms instantly find all of the items that they can receive for the items that they have.  Swaptree is completely free, and users only pay for postage, which means that they can get a book, CD, DVD, or video game for around two dollars.  Swaptree even simplifies the mailing process, by providing users the ability to print a perfect postage label right from their printer, so they don’t have to weigh items, buy stamps, or even go to the post office.

So head on over to Swaptree.com to check out the selection, take inventory of the stuff you’d like to swap and make your trade on Earth Day to get a tree planted in your honor.

Link [Swaptree]

Macedonians Plant Six Million Trees in One Day

Extensive wildfires in Macedonia over the past two summers destroyed millions of trees, but the hills and forests of this Balkan country will be green again before too long. Thousands of Macedonians came together in a major reforestation drive, and planted six million trees in a single day.

From Reuters:

“Our goal is to make Macedonia “greener” and make people more aware of the needs of this planet,” said Macedonian opera singer Boris Trajanov, who initiated the project.

Thousands of people were bused to the planting sites, including more than 1,000 soldiers who planted some 200,000 seedlings at 14 sites.

“Just as we take care of our homes, we should take care of our planet,” said Silvana, boarding a bus with her two children. “We have no other place to live, that’s why I’m going.”

Trajanov told Reuters he hoped to spread the campaign across the whole Balkan region next year.

“If Macedonia, a country of two million people, can plant six million trees, we can only imagine how many trees can be planted in other, bigger countries,” he said.

Six million trees in a single day – that’s really impressive. Pretty inspiring to see so many people come together for the purpose of beautifying their country and repairing damage to the environment. And, this wasn’t even the first time – back in March, they planted 2 million trees, symbolizing one for each citizen in the nation. Imagine how much good we could do if even a fraction of the citizens of every other nation in the world followed suit!

Link [Reuters] via [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Balkan Analysis

Get Trees for Your City Using Your American Express Card

American Express® is giving its cardholders a chance to win up to $300,000 worth of trees for their city with the ‘Root for Your City’ contest, going on until October 31st.  How it works is simple: look for participating merchants in your area on the American Express® website, or watch for the tree icon in-store. Pay for your purchase with any American Express® Card to ‘vote’ for your city.  The city that gets the largest amount of votes wins a $300,000 tree-planting grant, and the second through eighth place cities will each receive $100,000 toward planting trees.

Find participating businesses in your area today and you can help green up your city simply by making purchases.  The merchants participating include jewelry stores, shoe stores, furniture stores, movie theatres, museums, restaurants, clothing boutiques and even acupuncturists and fish markets.  The cities participating include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, NYC, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Get more info at the American Express website!

Link [Root for Your City]

Stumbleupon Going Green for Earth Day: Turn Your Thumbs Up Into Trees!

If you’ve been thinking about checking out Stumbleupon but haven’t gotten around to it yet, do it now! On Earth Day, April 22nd, they’re teaming up with Tiki Barber (former New York Giants running back and current Today Show correspondent) to plant a tree for every thumbs-up you give.

If you’ve been living under a rock, perhaps, or just aren’t hip to what all the cool kids are doing on the internet, Stumbleupon is an awesome tool that basically learns your tastes and interests and helps you discover things that fit. It’s a browser tool bar that allows you to give a ‘thumbs up’ to sites you like (and write up reviews, if you’re so inclined) and a ‘thumbs down’ to those you don’t. When you hit the ‘Stumble!’ button, it brings you random web pages based on your likes and dislikes. It’s a great way to literally ‘stumble upon’ things you may never have otherwise seen.

Sign up and get started today if you want to participate on Earth Day, so you can set up your ‘home page’ and get the hang of stumbling. Take this chance to give lots of thumbs down to greenwashing sites, and thumbs up to the good ones (like, oh, I don’t know, US!)

This way, if you end up spending most of your day in front of a computer instead of out actually planting trees yourself, you won’t feel so guilty! A win-win all around.

Link [ecorazzi] + [Stumbeupon]

Photo: Wikimedia Commons