Since 2021, Covia has proudly supported the Arbor Day Foundation with several unique tree-planting projects across North America. During the first year of our partnership, we helped plant 13,900 trees and sequester nearly 13,000 metric tons of CO2 over the course of the trees’ lifetime.
This year, as part of our enhanced commitment to climate action, we are taking our partnership a step forward by doubling our donation and starting an employee initiative to help reduce C02 levels even further. Our goal is to educate our team and empower them to take steps to reduce their carbon footprint. Let’s break down our 2023 initiatives to find out what steps members of our team took this year to do their part in reducing emissions.
Partnering for a Greener Tomorrow
Covia has established aggressive goals to help ensure a sustainable future for generations to come. We are working to preserve essential water supplies, reduce carbon emissions, and help restore biodiversity through land use and resource conservation. Through our partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, we have already begun taking actionable steps to sequester our carbon emissions and empower our team members to reduce their footprint.
Carbon Sequestration
This year, we helped plant 13,000 trees across the country. This included the the native longleaf pine in North Carolina and Texas, and the shortleaf pine in Arkansas, which had been impacted as a result of a natural disaster in the area. Our efforts made a massive impact on these regions – eliminating over 10 tons of air pollution and helping to restore essential forestland, improving water-basin quality, and providing critical habitat for wildlife in the region.
The trees that were planted this year will continue to grow and thrive – providing a long list of additional environmental benefits for decades to come, including:
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Cleaner air
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Improved watershed health
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Soil stabilization
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Improved ecosystems
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A slower rate of climate change
Employee Initiative
We launched a new initiative in 2022 to empower our employees to pursue a carbon-neutral future. Thanks to the Arbor Day Foundation’s Community Canopy program, Covia provided trees to team members to help lower their energy costs, reduce stormwater runoff, slow climate change, and make a green impact in their own neighborhoods. Employees who wanted to participate reserved their trees using an interactive tool to determine the best planting location to maximize the savings on their energy bills. Team members also had the option to donate their tree on someone’s behalf.
This process gave our team valuable experience to learn more about their environment and how important it is to act against climate change. While this program was only available to Covia team members living in the United States, we look forward to launching a global initiative soon.
Planting Seeds for the Future
One of Covia’s 2030 ESG Goals is to reduce carbon emissions and move closer to a carbon-neutral future. We all have a responsibility to take care of our planet. Part of that responsibility is reducing our carbon footprint as much as possible. Two ways we can do that are by decreasing emissions and planting trees. Through our continued partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, and our own organizational policies and initiatives, Covia will endeavor to be an industry leader in environmental stewardship and strive to build a better future for generations to come. We will continue to focus on growing our efforts over the coming years to meet our goal of a cleaner tomorrow.
