Save our forests

You Can Also Be an Eco-Hero

Forests cover about 30 percent of our planet’s land surface. They help maintain the environmental balance, stabilise the water cycle and the composition of the atmosphere, influence the climate, protect soils from erosion, prevent floods, create proper conditions for the preservation of biological potential of a large number of flora and fauna species.

No forests, no life

Forests provide half of the oxygen needed by all people and animals, producing nearly 26 billion tonnes of it a year. A 1-hectare forest assimilates yearly about 3,600 kilograms of carbon contained in 16 million cubic metres of the air. This means that in an hour a 1-hectare forest absorbs the amount of CO2 that is emitted by 200 persons in the same time. A 60-year-old pine tree releases oxygen needed by 3 persons and a 1-hectare forest satisfies the need for oxygen of 45 persons.

Trees absorb and neutralise toxic substances such as carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and heavy metals (lead, cadmium, copper, zinc). Spruce forests are the most efficient air filters. But even a spruce hedge growing along a busy road can absorb as much as 70 percent of pollutants.

When trees transpire steam is released into the air. One a few dozen-year-old tree such as a beech, an oak, an ash tree, a linden releases to the atmosphere

several hundred litres of water during the vegetation season on average. As a result, the moisture content of the bottom layers of the troposphere increases, which does not only improve the living conditions of organisms but also contributes to the removal of dispersed particles from the atmosphere.

More than a million flora and fauna species of all kinds live in forests. They account for almost two-thirds of the species that have already been discovered. It is worth mentioning that at least 10 million species, though some believe the figure is more like 100 million, have not been catalogued yet. Tropical rainforests are the richest ecosystems in terms of biodiversity. One hectare of such a forest may feature even up to a million of various plants and the same number of insects.

What we can do

Forests are also the source of raw materials, with wood being the most important one used as fuel or as a raw material in the timber and paper industries.

Due to the excessive exploitation of forests , the world’s forest area has been dramatically declining, by 13 million hectares every year.

products. Together, we can see to it that trees stay in the forest, where they belong, instead of ending up as paper in a shredding machine or a wastebasket.

At MAEM, we do a lot to save forests. Thanks to the changes and improvements implemented year by year, we use less paper and thus save trees. As a result of a successive implementation of the electronic flow of documents at our departments, we used 1,043 reams of A4 paper in 2019, compared to 1,430 in 2018, and we plan to buy only 600 reams in 2020. Over the past 3 years, our use of A4 paper has dropped by more than 800 reams of 500 sheets each. It has been calculated that 12,000 sheets of paper are produced from one

25-year-old pine tree. Based on this calculation, we can say that due to the implementation of the electronic flow of documents, we have saved more than 33 trees in the last three years!

Not always can printed documents be replaced with electronic ones, though. Can we be eco-friendly in such a case as well? Yes! At MAEM, we have solved the problem using the Toshiba E-Studio 3508LP device. Thanks to the erasable print function, your order picking lists are reused in the printer once the orders have been picked and are not just thrown into the wastebasket. Since we bought the printer, we have printed more than 10,000 pages using only one ream of paper! In our care for the environment we do not focus on saving trees only. At MAEM, we have made a step forward and have planted trees in our surroundings. The spruces we bought in the holiday season in December have taken roots and we enjoy looking at them throughout the year. The trees were a part of the holiday season atmosphere then and thanks to Adam who planted them, they will stay with us forever instead of ending up in the dump.

We hope this article and our activities will encourage you to become an eco- -hero. Forests are our shared treasure and each of us can take care of them.