Trees are important climate protectors. They store CO2 in their leaves and produce oxygen as part of photosynthesis. The ongoing deforestation of large forests for industry and agriculture has a major impact on our climate. To protect our planet, it is important to prevent deforestation and restore ecological balance through reforestation. We therefore launched a special campaign on Arbor Day and donated 10% of our sales to social organizations that aim to protect forests. Find out more here.
Forests: climate protectors of the world
The world's forests and the global climate are closely linked. We already learned this at school. But what was that exactly like?
Trees fulfill two important climate functions:
- Although forests only cover 30 percent of the land surface, they store around half of the carbon bound on earth in their vegetation. Combined with the carbon stored in forest soils, this actually exceeds the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Tropical rainforests are of particular importance. Due to their high biomass reserves, they store 50 percent more carbon than forests outside the tropics.
- But that's not all: trees not only store carbon and produce oxygen, they also control evaporation and water cycles and thus influence the weather. Connected forest areas function like giant air conditioning systems. The trees convert the solar energy irradiating their crowns into water vapor, convert this into oxygen as part of photosynthesis and at the same time cool our atmosphere.
Deforestation is a problem:
When important forests are cleared, most of the carbon stored in the leaves is released as carbon dioxide (CO2). The current rapid loss of forests is a major contributor to climate change. Around 13 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the destruction of forests. If the deforestation trend cannot be stopped, the world is at risk of losing 170 million hectares of forest - an area the size of Germany, France, Spain and Portugal combined. The tropical countries of Brazil and Indonesia are among the seven largest CO2 emitters in the world due to high emissions from deforestation alone.
Our actions are in demand!
Plant trees with OGNX
In order to prevent the loss of important tree populations, we use beech fibers from strict ecological and sustainable forestry in Europe to produce Lenzing Modal products. But that wasn't enough for us: on Arbor Day, April 25th, 2020, we launched an additional fundraising campaign and promised to donate 10% of all sales over the following weekend to reforestation organizations. We have now kept this promise and we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your help! With your help, we were able to have 28 trees planted in Germany and make a significant contribution to protecting a forest project in the Brazilian rainforest .
Thank you for actively protecting the climate with us!
