Timberland pledges to plant 50 million trees by 2025

Timberland has announced a new target to plant 50 million trees around the world by 2025 as part of a sustainability push.

The pledge comes as the outdoor apparel and lifestyle brand launches its largest global campaign to date: Nature Needs Heroes. The campaign celebrates 12 ‘eco-heroes’ across the world who are making lasting, positive change for the environment and their communities. Each will don new styles from the brand's autumn 2019 collection, against a backdrop of city greenscapes.

Alongside the campaign - which will span print, digital, out of home, and social media platforms - the VF Corporation-owned brand will also be encouraging the global community to engage in a series of tree planting and greening events.

Since 2001, Timberland has planted more than 10 million trees worldwide

“At Timberland, we’re conscious of the impact our modern way of life has on the planet. And we believe as a global lifestyle brand, and as individuals, we have a responsibility to make it better,” Jim Pisani, global brand president at Timberland, said in a statement. “Trees and green spaces help improve the quality of our planet as well as individual wellbeing. Our commitment to plant trees is a real, measurable way to act upon our belief that a greener future is a better future. We encourage people everywhere to join the movement by taking their own actions - small or large - to be heroes for nature.”

According to new research led by Swiss University ETH Zürich, the restoration of trees is one of the most effective strategies for climate change mitigation - a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions humans have contributed to the atmosphere.

As part of its tree-planting initiative, Timberland is partnering with a range of organizations that support the environment through large-scale regreening and tree planting efforts including the Smallholder Farmers Alliance, GreenNetwork, Tee Aid, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Connect4Climate – World Bank Group, Justdiggit, Las Lagunas Ecological Park, Trees for the Future, American Forests and Treedom.

Projects in the first year will focus on Haiti, China, the Dominican Republic, the United States, Tanzania and Mali – including support of the Great Green Wall, an African-led movement to grow an 8,000km line of trees across the width of Africa to help fight climate change, drought, famine, conflict, and migration.

“We are thrilled to have Timberland join the Great Green Wall movement – an emerging new world wonder that promises to grow hope for millions of people in the face of the 21 st century’s most urgent challenges,” Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, said in a statement.

Photo courtesy of the brand