This week, we have been in to Beech Grove Primary School in Wellington for a tree planting project.

Our vision for 2020 was to take part in the TICCIT program (trees into cartons, cartons into trees), which educates primary school children about trees, sustainability and the environment – but it’s started in 2019

Beech Grove Primary School have a whole week dedicated to the environment in the first week of January, and we were booked to come and see two classrooms during that week. However, the trees are acquired from the woodland trust, and with Christmas impending, logistically we were unable to source 60 silver birch trees unless we took delivery before Christmas.

So we decided along with the school to try and fit this in during the last week of term, during all the festivities that the school have with nativities and the usual Christmas rush at RHF this was a challenge but fulfilling and certainly gave the children and teachers something else to think about other than Christmas.

The TICCIT program, a venture marketed by Pro Carton and BPIF cartons involves a short presentation to classrooms about the value of paper and cardboard products as a renewable resource and with proper harvesting, one that is hugely beneficial to the environment. The children are able to learn about current forestry statistics and the nature of cardboard and its advantages in terms of an ethical and sustainable form of packaging. They are then invited to each plant a tree sapling into a bespoke box that can be taken home and planted in the soil as it is – because the cardboard is bio degradable – the tree becomes a box, the box then helps the tree grow.