3 Minutes 3 trees is a group of seniors from Carlmont High School trying to help the environment by stopping junk mail. Sabrina Eshaghi founder and Jessica Russon Co-founder are both very passionate about environment and feel it will be the biggest issue their generation will face.
Their objectives are:
- Educating people about waste and its effects on environment
- Reducing junk mail
- As a result saving 5 thousand trees before we graduate
- Saving the environment
It took perseverance, dedication, and drive in order to overcome the complications presented by the marketing companies. They've transformed a complicated and time consuming process into a quick and easy one.
They have been active in the community by helping people stop their junk mail at festivals such as ‘Belmont’s Earth Day’, ‘Sunset Magazine Festival’ and ‘Belmont Movie nights’. They've also started this month to have a table inside Whole Foods Market in Redwood City to help sign up people to reduce their junk mail.
Leading the pledge at televised City Council meeting on September 8th in Belmont and presenting our goals helped us gain their support and spread the word in our neighborhood.
So far we have helped 380 households reduce their junk mail which equals to saving 1140 trees.
We have gained trust and sponsorship of Senator Mark Leno, and Mayor Braunstein.
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Below facts from American Forests site reveals the importance of trees.
"Air pollution in our cities, and even our suburbs, is a serious concern as we enter the twenty first century. The burning of fossil fuels has introduced a steady flow of deadly pollutants into our atmosphere, yet very few urban areas can meet national clean air standards. Luckily, we are surrounded by efficient air cleaning machines—trees. Trees sequester many pollutants from the atmosphere, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulate matter of ten microns or less (PM10).
Dave Nowak, Ph.D., of the USDA Forest Service conducted research in 50 US cities and developed a methodology to assess the air pollution removal capacity of urban forests with respect to the above pollutants. American Forests uses this research to determine the work trees do to clean the air with CITYgreen software—a desktop GIS program that calculates the value of trees to urban environments. The program estimates the amount of pollution being deposited within a given study site based on pollution data from the nearest city then estimates the removal rate based on the area of tree and/or forest canopy coverage on the site.
Air Quality benefits are reported both in lbs removed per year, as well as annual dollar savings. Dollar values for pollutants are based on the median value of the externality costs set by the Public Service Commission in each state."
Trees and Air Quality around the Country
| City |
Pounds of pollutants removed annually by trees |
Annual value of trees with respect to air pollution |
| Washington, DC |
878,000 |
$2.1 million |
| Atlanta, GA Metro Area |
19,000,000 |
$47 million |
| Portland, OR Metro Area |
2,000,000 |
$4.8 million |
| Denver, CO Metro Area |
1,100,000 |
$2.6 million |
Source: American Forests website
