January 22nd, 2009 · No Comments

By Harriet Blake
Green Right Now

Plant a tree. A simple environmental concept. Trees absorb many of the toxins produced by today’s global warming. They add beauty to the landscape.

In the Big Apple, Mayor Bloomberg’s parks department has teamed with Bette Midler’s nonprofit New York Restoration Project to create MillionTreesNYC. (Midler founded the NYRP in 1995.)

MillionTreesNYC, which began in the fall of 2007, pledges to plant a million trees in New York City by 2017. The initiative will help New York City increase its trees by 20 percent. This includes street trees, park trees as well as trees located on public, private and commercial land.

Director Cristiana Fragola says the concept was a simultaneous effort by both the city and the Midler group. The plan is to have the city plant 60 percent of the trees in parks and public spaces. Private community groups, organized by the NYRP, will plant the rest.

“So far, we are totally on target,” says Fragola. “To date, we have planted 172,000 trees. In fact by the end of the fiscal year, which was in June, we exceeded our projections by 17 percent.”

In addition to the many community groups participating, several celebrities are lending their names as well, including Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland of The Police. The ‘80s icons performed a concert last summer with a pledge of $1 million in support of the MillionTreesNYC project. The donation was matched by the city. The combined $2 million goes toward the planting of 10,000 trees, which in turn helps reforest the 2,000 acres of parkland throughout the five boroughs as envisioned by MillionTreesNYC.

The money pledged by the Police, says Fragola, helped purchase the trees for their fall planting event. The Nov. 8 event attracted 1,000 New Yorkers, who planted 15,000 trees, she says. “We are having a spring planting day as well that takes place Saturday, April 25. People can register online.”

Reforestation helps clean air and water, while reducing greenhouse gases and lowering energy costs. Cleaner air keeps asthma attacks and other respiratory diseases at bay. In the summer, trees are particularly beneficial because they cool down streets, sidewalks and homes. They also add to a home’s property value.

According to Fragola, just four trees planted around a home can save as much as 30 percent on summer cooling costs. Currently, all of the trees in New York City remove more than 42,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year. The one million additional trees planted through this program are expected to remove more than 150,000 more.

The program also serves as green jobs training for young adults who need career skills. These aspiring horticulturists recently planted 1,000 trees in Riverdale Park as part of their paid-internships with MillionTreesNYC. (See picture at top.)

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