What do tea and trees have in common?

Well, apart from the fact that tea and trees both begin with T, there's great news from a charity and a tea company - Yorkshire Tea to be exact - which concerns Trees.

The Woodland Trust's new partner has just announced that its new partner - Yorkshire Tea - has pledged half a million trees.

Based in the beautiful city of Harrogate (well worth a visit, flowers everywhere and the RHS gardens are a must to see, ditto Betty's Tea Rooms), Yorkshire Tea  say that the 500,000 trees will help create new homes for wildlife from deers to dragonflies, bats to beetles.  They will also provide places for recreation and education for schools and communities across the UK.

20 years ago, the then Chairman of Yorkshire Tea promised his children he would plant one million trees to help reverse deforestation.   Today, the company wants to save an area of rainforest the size of Yorkshire - which is the biggest county in the UK - and so far, they have planted a whopping three million trees! 

Yorkshire Tea will also be planting 500,000 trees in Kenya working with the communities around the tea estates which provide the tea for the Yorkshire Tea blend. 

The partnership with the Woodland Trust will begin at the start of March - meantime, the company funded the planting of hundreds of thousands of trees for rainforests in Africa through its ‘Vanishing Woods’ project.  Click here for more information on it.

It's great to see a company and charity working together for animal and human wellbeing :-) 

Please recycle your Christmas cards

Happy New Year!  Hope you had a good holiday season :-) 

If you've taken down all your Christmas cards and are wondering what to do with them, you could take them to either M&S or Sainsbury's. 

They are both doing recycling schemes, in the case of M&S to help the Woodland Trust and plant trees, and in the case of Sainsbury's to make a donation to the FSC who help manage forests. 

Both woodland and forests are important to animal and human wellbeing, so these are great causes.

There are deadlines to these themes - in the case of M&S, it's the 31 January 2015 and in the case of Sainsbury's, it's the 13th January 2015.  You can also take your wrapping paper to Sainsbury's who will recycle it.

You can find out more on both schemes here