You Eat - We Plant - They Grow
Who doesn’t love eating out? Being immersed by the full sensorial delights whilst being surrounded by our family or friends is one of life’s ultimate pleasures and our fondest experiences probably involved breaking bread. But sometimes like a souffle, what goes up does come down.
Food production and restaurants account for approximately 30% of all carbon emissions and food miles in the UK produce around 19 million tonnes of CO2 in the UK annually, so it’s important that we all take a little more responsibility for what and where we eat.
Climate Conscious Restaurants
At SKOOT we’ve made it easy for climate conscious restaurants to help reduce their carbon footprint with SKOOT’s Green Service Charge, working alongside some of the world’s leading climate change partners and to the highest standards..
This small optional charge in partnership with the restaurants enables us to plant mangrove trees in our dedicated site in Tudor Creek Kenya, just outside Mombassa, with world renowned NGO, Eden Reforestation.
Every three course meal you eat in a restaurant creates approximately 8kg of CO2,
which doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you eat out once a week, that’s nearly half a tonne of carbon dioxide (or a ball 5 meters in diameter floating above your head).
By planting a mangrove for every bill, or every person, each tree will help remove 5.9kg of carbon in its 1st year, and within their life-time, remove close to 500kg per tree. Greatly helping to slow down the current climate crisis.
Why have we chosen to plant mangroves?
Mangroves can be considered as one of the world's super trees, they are a part of the coastal ecosystem and are highly effective at sequestering blue carbon.
Mangroves capture and store the blue carbon in their leaves, branches, roots and soil in the form of carbohydrates until the tree dies, decays or is burnt. They can store up to ten times more carbon per hectare than any other terrestrial forest and they are 5 times better at removing carbon than North Hemisphere trees.
Globally mangroves are estimated to store over 6.4 billion tonnes of carbon in their soil, and individually will remove 750kg of carbon in their lifespan, making them highly effective at reducing climate change and reducing people’s carbon footprints.
As well as being incredible for climate mangroves are essential for many other other reasons. They act as a natural coastal defence against floods, storm surges and protect local coral reefs. They are also hotspots of biodiversity, home to a wide variety of wildlife both above and below the waterline.
Mangroves are vital for millions of peoples survival, as the people who live around them depend on them for their livelihoods, for shelter, for food, fire and water. They contribute considerably to the alleviation of poverty in less developed areas.
Why Do We Plant in Kenya?
One of our Founders, Mark Stringer, was lucky enough to live in Kenya growing up and has such fond memories of both the people and the place, he wanted to try and give something back to such a wonderful country and community when we were looking for a location to plant..
Our site at Tudor Creek is 2055 hectares, is around the corner from where he spent many family holidays as a young child (here’s an actual picture of him on the beach at Whitesands, in the mid 70’s). At our site we are able to plant all of the trees bought by businesses, communities, or individuals.
In Kenya 42% of the population live under the poverty line and only 7% of the land is covered in forests, both of these facts are distressing but with Eden we can help to change these numbers. Providing local communities with employment whilst building up the number of trees and subsequently reducing carbon in the atmosphere.
Why Eden?
Eden is a world renowned NGO planting nearly 30 million trees per month, across the world. Not only do they focus on planting trees, they focus on saving lives.
They operate in 11 nations, planting nearly a million trees a day. Whilst healing nature they are simultaneously providing communities faced with extreme poverty a chance at economic self sufficiency. Due to their commitment to rebuilding the planet on a multitude of levels Eden was the clear choice for SKOOT to partner with to plant our trees.
SKOOT Awards and Recognition
We’re just getting started, but our community is growing and we’re helping create a cleaner greener world.
