They are real artists of life, grow in salty water and under the scorching sun, protect the coasts from erosion, offer a diverse habitat for animals and people and by the way, they are also incredibly efficient at storing CO2. The mangrove describes an entire ecosystem made up of the most varied types of shrubs and trees. Mangrove forests line the world's tropical coasts, protecting the land from erosion from the rough sea. The people in the countryside also benefit from this, as the mangroves make them less endangered by tidal waves. Land and marine organisms share the habitat in the branched roots. For many sea creatures, the mangrove ecosystem is the nursery, here various fish and crustaceans spawn. Further up, in the tops of the mangrove trees, water birds, reptiles and mammals feel at home. In addition to the tropical rainforest and coral reefs, mangrove forests are the most productive ecosystems on earth. We think it's pretty impressive.
Offsetting emissions through trees
The idea of offsetting emissions through trees is not new. As a company, however, we asked ourselves how we can make reforestation most effective when it comes to offsetting emissions. Which tree binds a lot of CO2, is easy to plant and doesn’t break the budget? Fortunately, mangrove trees meet all of these requirements and that is precisely why we have been contributing to the reforestation of the mangroves since March 2018.
Because unfortunately the area of the mangrove forests shrinks by 2% every year. That doesn't sound very dramatic at first, but a whole quarter of the original mangrove forests have already disappeared. This not only threatens the habitat for humans and animals, but also releases the stored, climate-damaging gases during deforestation.
Facts please! Mangroves do that
So that you can get a better idea of how efficient mangroves actually are, we want to list a few facts about CO2 storage. One hectare of mangrove forest can pull between 1.5 and 3 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per year. One hectare is a bit bigger than a standard soccer field and one ton of CO2 is equivalent to the emissions of a car if you drive alone from Hamburg to Lisbon and back again. Mangroves are just incredibly efficient, almost a little underestimated carbon sinks. In total, the world's mangrove forests store around 20 billion tons of CO2 per year and that on an area that is less than 1% of the area of the rainforest.