Samsung to Plant Millions of Trees to Fight Climate Change

Addressing climate change requires action. Samsung is committed to doing its part to reduce its environmental footprint by embedding sustainability into its business strategies and operations, developing innovative products for a circular economy, and empowering eco-conscious consumers to make a positive impact in their communities.

Samsung is also broadening its climate strategy by leveraging existing solutions to capture and sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.

Samsung Electronics America is launching a new nature-based project to take actions that support a healthy climate and planet. The company has set a goal to plant two million trees in Madagascar by the end of the first quarter of 2022. Samsung is partnering with climate solutions platform veritree to manage the tree-planting initiative by harnessing blockchain technology to verify and track every step of the reforestation process.

“Samsung’s sustainability journey is an ongoing and multi-faceted one. Investing in tech innovations, such as those that create efficiency improvements and minimize waste, in combination with nature-based solutions, are vital in the fight against climate change,” said Mark Newton, head of corporate sustainability at Samsung Electronics America. “Drawing on our history of open collaboration, we’re teaming up with veritree for the tree-planting initiative as an added way to contribute to a better global society.”
The Ultimate Giving Tree

Trees and forests play a critical role in stabilizing the climate. They impact the carbon cycle, regulate ecosystems, conserve biodiversity, and can help support the well-being and livelihood of local communities.

Samsung will work with on-the-ground experts from Eden Reforestation Projects and community members to plant two million mangrove trees near the Mahajanga region of Madagascar, a coastal region faced with biodiversity challenges due to deforestation on an enormous scale. The tropical trees are expected to restore roughly 200 hectares of land and sequester roughly one billion pounds of CO2 over a 25-year period.

The mangroves that Samsung is planting in Madagascar are some of the world’s most effective nature-based carbon sinks – places where CO2 is captured and stored, removing it from the atmosphere. Mangrove roots, which are usually covered by water year-round, store CO2 in the submerged soil along with the trunk and limbs of the tree. Forests in drier climates, such as those in North America, have less capacity to absorb and store carbon dioxide than mangroves. It would take between 50 and 100 years to capture the same amount of carbon in a US forest as in the same area populated with mangroves.