Friday, January 9, 2009
BATON ROUGE, La. — Franklin, the provider of Data Empowered Direct Mail, purchased 500 tree seedlings from the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry in a campaign to help reforest areas devastated by recent hurricanes.
Franklin offered its customers free tree seedlings to replace trees uprooted from Florida to Texas. The region experienced widespread tree loss beginning with hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005 and continuing to Hurricane Gustav in 2008. In addition to customers, Franklin provided trees to the Girl Scouts, Baton Rouge Green and the Baton Rouge Zoo. Local Boy Scouts also planted Franklin trees to earn their Forestry Merit Badge.
“When I realized that the hurricanes of recent years destroyed or damaged literally hundreds of millions of trees, I felt obligated to help,” said Franklin President Ernie Seals. “I know 500 trees is a drop in the bucket compared to the loss, but if we can get more people on the replanting bandwagon, our environment will improve in time.”
The mailer announcing the promotion was itself tree-free and printed on a special substrate called Ultra Green. The product is made from limestone using no water or harmful chemicals.
“We recently became certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative,” Seals said, “so we are well aware of the need to print in an environmentally sound way. The limestone paper just came out of our ongoing research to find more sustainable printing practices.”