Initiative of Klimapatenschaft GmbH and Logistik-Initiative Hamburg plants 2,000 deciduous trees in one day
For the third time, the Hamburg office of PTA IT-Beratung is now the climate sponsor of a pioneering initiative that is committed to sustainability in the region: Under the motto “Hamburg’s logistics plants drinking water”, the Hamburg Logistics Initiative, in cooperation with Klimapatenschaft GmbH, organized a planting day with its member companies in the Klövensteen forest. The planting helpers, including our tree sponsor Gerd Minners once again, planted around 2,000 drinking water trees, which will produce 200 liters of drinking water per tree per year.
Nature conservation and climate protection have become a tradition here
The tree planting campaign “Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein plant drinking water” is now the largest and most successful environmental protection event organized by the climate sponsorship and is becoming increasingly popular. In 2022, the initiative and its tireless supporters planted a total of 40,000 deciduous trees – for the availability of drinking water, for the promotion of biodiversity and for the climate. Over 70 companies, organizations and private individuals actively participated in a total of six planting days. The climate sponsorship will keep up this pace in 2023. Three planting campaigns took place in Klövensteen Forest alone in November, followed by others elsewhere.
Drinking water forest is created …
The objective of the nature and climate protection project therefore remains unchanged: By planting drinking water trees, the participating companies and private individuals are making a meaningful ecological contribution to how they can offset the water they use for their production, their goods or generally in their company or in their own household. The initiative has been planting drinking water trees here every year since 2014. In this way, several large areas have already been converted in Klövensteen Forest in recent years, up to ten hectares of forest per year – and the success of the planting days is now visible: a healthy, sustainable deciduous forest is developing under the conifers. In the following video you can get a nice impression of it:
… by planting a mixed deciduous forest
The Klövensteen forest is a wooded area dominated by conifers such as spruce and pine. These trees bear needles all year round and a dense felt of grass forms under the trees on the forest floor. This simply allows precipitation to evaporate before it can seep through the upper layers of soil into the groundwater. In addition, the needles hanging on the tree all year round prevent rainwater from seeping down into the ground. These processes, known as evaporation, hinder the recharge of groundwater.
The increased humus formation that a healthy mixed deciduous forest produces, on the other hand, promotes fungi and microorganisms that filter pollutants out of the water. The advantages of such a mixed forest – in addition to increasing the quality and quantity of groundwater – are considerable: such a forest increases the resilience of the affected forest system to storm damage and parasites and also promotes biodiversity.
As part of this year’s planting days, the climate protectors have also made a regional and sustainable commitment and made a valuable contribution to converting largely dead spruce monocultures into a climate-resistant mixed forest. The resulting mixed deciduous forest promotes the recharge and filtration of the regional groundwater. The extent to which this is now happening is quite impressive: every deciduous tree planted promotes the formation of 200 liters of groundwater every year. Since the start of this campaign in 2014, over 137,150 trees have been planted in Germany, enabling the recharge of 27,430,000 liters of clean groundwater and drinking water every year in a completely natural way.
Sustainability – an important and forward-looking topic
The results achieved show that sustainability and climate protection have a positive impact on our environment and that impressive things can be created together. Our experienced tree sponsor Gerd Minners is also sure of this. In an interview with Logistik-Initiative Hamburg, he pointed out that sustainability affects everyone and is therefore also a high priority for an IT consultancy such as PTA. After all, PTA provides a wide range of services for logistics and retail logistics in the greater Hamburg area and therefore bears responsibility. According to Minners, regular participation in the campaign shows that PTA takes the issue of sustainability seriously and has firmly anchored it in its corporate philosophy for a future worth living.
Photos: Klimapatenschaft GmbH / PTA
