Go Zero is administered by The Conservation Fund, the nation’s top-rated environmental nonprofit by the American Institute of Philanthropy.
Your charitable contribution of approximately $5.00 per tree helps support the Fund’s Carbon Sequestration program – an effort to plant native trees to address climate change, protect wildlife habitat and enhance America’s public recreation areas. Since 2000, The Conservation Fund has restored nearly 20,000 acres and planted six million trees through its carbon sequestration program. Over their lifetime, these trees will capture an estimated eight million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent from the atmosphere.
Native trees and forests help fight climate change as part of a natural process called photosynthesis. As they grow, trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (C02 is a potent greenhouse gases) and convert it into oxygen. In addition to trapping the dangerous gases that cause climate change, these new forests help to protect water quality, restore wildlife habitat and enhance public recreation areas.
The process of trapping carbon in forests, soils, geological formations and other carbon “sinks” is called carbon sequestration. The majority of these trees are planted and monitored by Environmental-Synergy Inc., a group of leading scientists that specializes in reforestation and carbon sequestration monitoring and Environmental Resources Trust.
The Conservation Fund is working across the country to plant trees and address climate change. This year, the Go Zero program will reforest areas in National Wildlife Refuges from New Jersey to Texas to South Carolina to Georgia.
For the past several years, The Conservation Fund’s reforestation efforts have been focused on the Lower Mississippi River Valley – an area that lost more than 20 million acres of bottomland hardwood forest over the last century. This area will remain a core Conservation Fund focus in the years to come. To date, significant carbon sequestration and reforestation efforts have occurred on public lands at:
Go Zero trees are combined with existing and future carbon sequestration projects. Typically, the Fund completes three to four carbon sequestration projects each year.
Your estimated annual carbon dioxide footprint is the sum of the carbon dioxide that is produced by your home energy use, auto transportation, and air travel.
The average American is responsible for emitting approximately 20 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.
Sequestration rates are based on scientific research conducted by third party experts Winrock International, Environmental Synergy, Inc. and the US Fish and Wildlife Service and vary depending on species of tree and geographic location. Go Zero calculations assume average sequestration rates per acre of land reforested and always include appropriate tree survival assumptions.
For example, in the lower Mississippi River Valley, where most of the Fund’s sequestration efforts have been focused, the Fund and its partners plant approximately 300 trees per acre, which will sequester approximately 400 tons of carbon dioxide over 100 years. Therefore, on a per planted tree basis, each tree absorbs an average of approximately 1 to 1.3 tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.
Yes. It should be included as part of a broader climate change strategy. Estimates are that as much as 50% of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 50 years may be due to the effects of land use change. Thus, restoring forestland represents a natural way to reverse these effects and combat climate change. As trees grow they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in living plant tissue. Reforestation of once-forested, but currently unproductive areas such as marginal agricultural lands is a recognized and proven way to sequester carbon.
According to a recent study by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, climate change policies should include storage of carbon dioxide in U.S. forests. “Climate change is the major global environmental challenge of our time and in order to deal with it in the most cost-effective way, we need to consider the full range of solutions – and that includes carbon storage in forests,” said Eileen Claussen, President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. “If we ignore the potential for forest-based sequestration, any projection of the costs and feasibility of addressing climate change is going to be overly pessimistic and wrong.”
In fact, the EPA estimates that growing a Douglas fir forest for a century or so is 25% to 50% more efficient at reducing carbon dioxide buildup than using an equivalent amount of land to grow biofuels. In other words, if you grow, say, switch grass hay to produce electricity you will allow roughly 25% to 50% more carbon dioxide to remain in the atmosphere than if you had planted a fir forest on the same amount of acreage and used coal to make electricity.
The Go Zero program was created to calculate and offset the annual carbon dioxide emitted by a specific activity, business, organization or individual. Therefore, all earned ‘carbon credits’ are retired and cannot be banked for future offset purposes or sold.
The Conservation Fund works primarily with state and federal public land agencies, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service. These organizations are the long-term land managers and stewards of the Go Zero trees and employ some of the world’s top biologists and environmental professionals. These public agency partners also provide third party validation for the Go Zero program.
Yes. To find out how Go Zero can be customized to meet the specific needs of your company or organization, contact Jena Thompson at jthompson@conservationfund.org.
Go Zero's corporate programs can service:
Looking to engage and inspire customers by including Go Zero in an online purchase path or percent-of-sale transaction? Please help us maintain our commitment to efficiency and effectiveness by completing a short cause-related marketing partnership request form to begin the process.
The Conservation Fund has been a leader in carbon sequestration through reforestation for the past seven years, adhering to the most rigorous environmental and scientific principles. The Conservation Fund uses calculation methods and standards set forth by The Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative (GHG Protocol), which aims to harmonize accounting and reporting standards worldwide to ensure that different trading platforms and other climate related initiatives adopt consistent approaches to GHG accounting.
In terms of its reforestation activities, all Go Zero projects adhere to the following principles:
This Mother’s Day Biolage and the Fund will unveil an initiative to plant more than 9,000 trees that will absorb nearly 24 million pounds of carbon dioxide over their lifetime.
You can help when you purchase special co-branded Biolage products from participating salons. This year, Biolage will donate $50,000 to the Fund to support its Go Zero program.
Powered by: Phase2 TechnologyThe Conservation Fund National Office
1655 N. Fort Myer Drive, Suite 1300
Arlington, Virginia 22209-2156
Phone: 703-525-6300
Fax: 703-525-4610
Email: postmaster@conservationfund.org
