Trinity Oaks Plants More Than A Million Trees
Ξ July 15th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |
A bit of good news came my way this morning, a press release announcing that Trinity Oaks had been given an award by the non-profit organization, Trees for the Future, for planting one million trees from June, 2008 to June of 2009. That’s right, one million trees. It is the result of an initiative begun by Trinchero Family Estates, owner of the Trinity Oaks label, and long a ‘green pioneer’. With over 7,000 acres of vineyards under their management they can make an enormous difference. And with the Trinity Oaks’ ‘One Bottle, One Tree’ campaign they have yet deepened their commitment to sound, sustainable environmental practices.
First a word about Trees for the Future. Their mission statement:
“Since 1989, Trees for the Future has been helping communities around the world plant trees. Through seed distribution, agroforestry training, and our country programs, we have empowered rural groups to restore tree cover to their lands. Planting trees protects the environment and helps to preserve traditional livelihoods and cultures for generations.”
It was founded by Dave and Grace Deppner in 1988. The Deppners had spent many years, beginning in the early 1970s,
“serv[ing] as volunteers in developing countries around the world, they took note of the human tragedy brought on by illegal logging and unsustainable land management systems. Families who could no longer sustain themselves on their farmland turned to find work in cities where they were marginalized and struggled to put food on the table.
“Working with community leaders, the Deppners began to find ways to offer hope to villagers by reestablishing productive lands – with their families and culture intact. They renewed degraded lands by providing farmers with beneficial tree seed, technical training, and on-site planning assistance. People responded enthusiastically. Entire villages joined in, making great sacrifices to save their homes and way of life.”
Their story is a remarkable one and further reading may enjoyed here. Especially revealing is an accompanying video I encourage the reader to view. In fact, explore the entire website!
Trinity Oaks’ ‘One Bottle, One Tree’ campaign is very simple. I’ve just presented the sum total of its approach! Naturally, who would not want to know more? I contacted Trinity Oaks for comment and was invited by Jason Hart, Associate Brand Manager for Trinity, to talk. What follows is our modest exchange.
Admin Thank you for taking time to speak with me.
Jason Hart No problem. We definitely like to get the word out. I am the Associate Marketing Manager for Trinity Oaks. My boss is Tim Peters who is the Marketing Director on that brand. He’s out of town for a fews days. I figured I could answer any questions you had.
Yes. How did you become associated with Trees for the Future and founder, Mr. Dave Deppner?
JH It really came down to researching things on-line. They have a nice website with a lot of resources and information. There are a lot of different organizations that do this, but I think this was the unique one. They do things a little differently at Trees for the Future. They are the pros. They’ve been doing it since 1988. They’ve planted almost 50 million trees in that ten years, so we thought that they were a very credible organization. We wanted to work with somebody who had that experience and that background, somebody that was reputable.
But, really we just researched things on-line and tried to find the best organization to partner with. And we contacted them directly because the idea was in our heads; between my boss, Tim, and myself, we were tossing things around for Trinity Oaks and trying to work with somebody that would help get this program started. That’s what it came down to: online research! To be honest with you.
When we contacted Trees for the Future they were, of course, very enthusiastic about the idea of partnering with us. And they work with a lot of different organizations, a lot of other credible companies, too, so that lends even more credibility to them as an organization.
I find it very praiseworthy that you folks actually did the initial research.
JH Yes, imagine that phone call! Coming to Trees for the Future from this big wine company, out of nowhere, wanting to partner with you, to plant well over a million trees in a year’s time! They must have been a little bit ecstatic on their end. (laughs)
This is an approach that I certainly hope more wine companies take. It is quite wonderful. It made my day, I’ll tell you that.
JH Yes. And you said you saw the press release, that’s how you found out about it?
Indeed. It appeared in my email box today.
JH Yeah. And that’s something we just put it out. It’s been a while now. As a matter of fact, that award we received from Trees for the Future for planting a million trees this year, it’s a little out-dated by now because at this point we’ve actually planted 1.6 million.
Exactly. I went to the website and noted the new total. From visiting this morning and again this afternoon the number has increased.
JH Yes. It does. Admittedly it’s a formula that’s based on what we project month to month, so we update it for the website. We try and be as accurate as possible. But it is based on forecasted sales. The number varies, it’s not exactly correct. We’re not registering sales at the cash register in a store. But it is a pretty good estimate. We just have to adjust it once a month. It’s kind of a fun thing that allows people to check back from tme to time to see where we’re at.
It’s pretty powerful stuff. I mean, you step back and look at it. Over one million trees is a huge number! I’ve seen a lot of other programs out there, and even some within the wine industry. But when you compare it to what we’ve done… 1.6 million trees, that’s in the first year of the program. And we’re continuing it for another year. So we started it July 1st, 2008, and we’ve continued into year two this July 1st. So we’re looking at possibly 3 million trees planted, hopefully, by the end of June in 2010. Huge!
Two million additional trees by next June?
JH Yes. The projection is right around the same if not a little more for this up-coming year. As you know from the program it’s for every bottle of Trinity Oaks that we sell we donate the money to plant one tree. You know, us office guys certainly are not out there planting trees, but we’re donating money that goes toward, almost immediately, goes toward projects Trees for the Future has going on. In fact, they’ve told us that the Trinity Oaks donations so far have been used to plant trees in Cameroon, Senegal, Tanzania and Brazil. They’ve got projects going on in many different countries.
Indeed. On their website they have a wonderful introductory video that shows many of their projects around the world.
JH They have a different model than a lot of other organizations in that they don’t necessarily employ all the people who are going out and planting every tree. Their model is to work with the native cultures in those countries, in those areas where they’re going to plant trees, to educate them on how to plant the trees themselves. They enlist the help and the buy-in of the local cultures to plant the trees so that they can continue to do it when the educators aren’t there. It’s a sustainability [issue] as much as it is a tree planting issue. They are contributing towards their own ecosystem. It’s a really neat model.
So, the tree planting year ended on June 30th, and in just the space of, what, half a month it’s is now at 1.6 million. It looks like you’re on pace for far more trees planted next year than you’ve planted this year.
JH Actually, the million tree mark was hit somewhere in April. They presented us with the award recently. We felt it would be a nice piece of news to resonate with people, the million tree award. But that mark was hit back in April. It’s funny; the timing, and we didn’t mean for this to happen, but the timing of the million trees actually happened around Arbor Day! So it is since April to now that we’ve gone from the million mark to 1.6 million where we’re at right now.
Even so, it still looks as though you’re on pace to shatter last year’s mark.
JH I hope so. We’re able to get our customers to buy into the program. We get them involved around the country. Anybody can view the ‘tree ticker’ to see where we’re at as far as trees planted. We have some nice tools customers, retail stores, restaurants, wine shops, they’re able to see what their contribution is. One bottle, one tree. So it is pretty simple. They know how many cases of Trinity Oaks they’ve sold; that’s how many trees they’ve planted. Some restaurant chains have been latching on to it and having tree planting contests among their waitstaff. That’s sort of an incentive or motivation among their employees to sell more Trinity Oaks. Great for us, great for them; it gives them something tangible, to contribute.
There are certainly people out there who are not interested in saving the world out there. They don’t have to be. You can drink great wine and do something nice for the environment at the same time. So far it’s been pretty successful, and it is something we continue to do in the future.
Now, Trinchero has many lables, Sutter Hill, Terra d’Oro, Ménage à Trois and a few others. Why was Trinity Oaks selected to be the flagship wine for this program?
JH Well, it made sense for us from the marketing side. It is easy to connect the dots with a brand called Trinity Oaks. We’ve been trying to find its personality, find its reason for being. So we thought , hey, it’s Trinity Oaks, it has a tree in the name, it has a tree illustration on the label. It is a natural connection with this sort of program. The bottle has one tree and it ties that together. We try to make it as easy as possible for people to understand. Hopefully, we’ve done that.
Indeed. It is a lot easier than if you had a yellow kangaroo on the label.
JH Exactly! (laughs) One bottle, one kangaroo!
Well, congratulations on your achievement with Trinity Oaks, and, I might add, the many other environmental measures Trinchero employs.
JH There are a lot of things the Trinchero Family does just as a company that are important to them. You don’t necessarily hear about them very much. The Trinchero Family is a very humble family. They don’t publicize every little award they get, every little acknowledgment they get for their environmental contributions. But they certainly do a lot of things in the way of conservation, recycling, sustainability in the way they farm. It’s pretty interesting once you dig into it, because we are a large wine company, so the impact that we can have just making small changes in the way we do things is pretty significant.
Thank you very much, Jason. And keep those press releases coming.
JH Definitely. We’ll keep everybody updated as the tree count continues to build. Thanks a lot.
Admin
