UPM and ENO Environment Online Plant Trees with Schoolchildren in UK, Uruguay and Finland

Helsinki, Finland, May 20, 2011 – UPM participates in ENO – Environment Online’s Tree Planting Day on May 20 in United Kingdom, Uruguay and Finland. The annual event is part of UPM’s partnership with ENO, a global virtual school and network for sustainable development. ENO has been running since 2000 and reached thousands of schools in 150 countries.

“The seedlings planted on the Tree Planting Day represent just a fraction of the 50 million seedlings UPM plants annually around the world. Yet we see the cooperation with ENO and local schools extremely important in building future generations’ relationship to nature and forests,” says Timo Lehesvirta, Director, Environment.

”Tree planting is a concrete way of bringing issues related to forests closer to people. It is one way to demonstrate how UPM continuously plans actions related to forestry and forest regeneration in the long term, decades ahead,” Lehesvirta points out.

“Tree planting symbolises sustainable development. A tree seedling represents ecosystem services where the tree during its lifetime hosts hundreds of other forest species, sequestrates carbon, secures pure surface and ground water and stabilises local climate” concludes ENO’s Coordinator Mika Vanhanen.

UPM is committed to carrying out its international biodiversity programme, aiming to keep forests full of life. The goal of UPM’s biodiversity programme is to secure biodiversity as a vital part of sustainable forestry, simultaneously promoting best practices in forestry. The United Nations biodiversity declaration signed by UPM is a natural part of the company’s long-lasting work in developing sustainable forestry practices. Year 2011 is the UN’s International Year of Forests, and May 22 is UN’s biodiversity day, focusing this year to forest biodiversity.

The ENO Tree Planting Day is an open event for schools and groups interested in environment and peace. It is arranged twice in a year, in May and in September. Planting is one of the most popular activities in the ENO Programme. ENO’s goal is to get 10,000 schools involved.