Beginning in 2007, TreeSmart Australia has provided sponsorship to the Hawthorn Football Club, by offsetting the greenhouse emissions associated with team flights to play home games in Launceston. TreeSmart has also been a player sponsor, having sponsored Captain Sam Mitchell and a number of other players over the past six years.
TreeSmart Australia is an organisation committed to the carbon offsetting of greenhouse emissions of their subscribers, who range from individuals to companies and government organisations.
They achieve this by planting and developing farm forestry eucalypt plantations that are destined for eventual harvesting and replanting. The aim of these plantations is that they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, and this carbon is then locked into the durable timber products that are made from the harvested trees.
In sponsoring Hawthorn FC in 2009, TreeSmart calculated the emissions associated with the flights to Launceston, and then calculated the number of trees that would need to be used to absorb the emissions from that travel.
It was estimated that the four home games in Tassie, plus one pre-season game, generated a total of 225,000 kms of air travel for the combined team, and about 100 tonnes of CO2 emissions.This required about five hectares of plantation to be set aside for the year to absorb these emissions.
TreeSmart offer a range of subscriptions, mainly relating to annual motor vehicle usage, for individual air flights and for offsetting of emissions in travel to and from conferences.
The cost to TreeSmart to plant sufficient trees to offset an individual’s average yearly car travel is just $50. You can easily make your own personal car travel carbon neutral by purchasing online at http://treesmart.com.au/subscription (be sure to mention Hawthorn FC when asked how you heard about the program).
Find out more at http://treesmart.com.au.
The trees used for the Hawks offsetting are being grown on one of TreeSmart’s farm forestry plantations at Taggerty, north-east Victoria.
