How Bettys of Harrogate is saving rainforests

How Bettys is saving rainforests

Jonathan Wild, chairman of Bettys Tea Rooms & Taylors of Harrogate, has been saving trees for over twenty years.

He was inspired when he came home one afternoon to find his two children in tears after seeing a BBC programme about deforestation.

Jonathan says he then promised his children that he would plant a million trees.

Two decades later the company has planted three million trees and is now trying to save an area of rainforest.

The children had been watching an edition of Blue Peter showing how many forests across the world were being destroyed. Jonathan says he had to tell them something,

"I told them not to worry and if they could find a way to plant just one tree I promised to plant another 999,999."

That first tree was planted in the centre of Harrogate in 1990 and a decade later, in 2000, the millionth tree was also planted in the town.

The tree-planting project continued and it was the Blue Peter team who came to Harrogate in 2007 to plant the three millionth tree.

New commitment

It was then Jonathan Wild made a new commitment, to save an area of Amazon rainforest the size of Yorkshire.

Jonathan was inspired by his children to do something about deforestation

Rainforests once covered 14% of earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and around 150,000 square kilometres of tropical rainforest, equivalent to the size of England and Wales, is destroyed every year.

The project that Bettys and Taylors established, the Yorkshire Rainforest Project, now works alongside the Rainforest Foundation UK with the Ashaninka community in Peru.

The 10,000-strong Ashaninka community have relied on the rainforest for their food, shelter, fuel, livelihoods and medicines for generations.

Now the Rainforest Foundation is helping the community develop small-scale and sustainable farming methods including the introduction of cocoa that can grow in the shade so that trees don't need to be cut down.

Jonathan says his children, who inspired the project, are extremely proud of what the company has achieved.

"Astounded and extremely proud. My daughter, 28 and a mother herself, now realises just how important that little event two decades ago was."