Peugeot plants 2 million trees to help reduce global warming

Filed

on 04/04/2006

Source: Peugeot

An environmental project created by Peugeot will help to reduce the effect of vehicle emissions on the environment.

In an area affected by deforestation in Fazenda São Nicolau, in the heart of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, Peugeot started a project to plant two million trees, to create a forestry ‘carbon sink’.

The project was started in 1999, but now in 2006, the young forest is ready to carry out its task of capturing carbon from the atmosphere. The aim of the project is to provide an area which will absorb more carbon over a given period of time than it emits. This will then offset the already low carbon emission from Peugeot vehicles and help combat the global greenhouse effect.

In creating this ‘carbon sink’ Peugeot calculated the amount of CO2 produced by individual cars and then planted the equivalent number of trees to balance out the cycle. The first ‘Carbon appraisals’ have revealed that from 1999, some 15,000 tonnes of carbon had been gained representing the equivalent of 55,000 tonnes of CO2.

Pierre Louis Colin Managing Director of Peugeot UK, said: "This is a major undertaking for Peugeot and one we take very seriously. There are more than 30 million vehicles on the UK’s roads and, as a vehicle producer, we understand we have a responsibility to both the environment and our customers."

As well as the ‘carbon sink’ project, Peugeot is also cutting CO2 emissions at source with its HDi diesel technology, which reduces CO2 emissions by 20% compared to a conventional diesel engine. Later on this year a new range of petrol engines will be launched in the new Peugeot 207, designed to improve performance, but also to reduce emissions.