THE Boy Scouts of the Philippines (BSP) and Coca-Cola Export
Corp., recently kicked off a tree planting program aimed at planting 100,000
trees in selected BSP camps nationwide.
The affair, dubbed as "Go Green! Go for the Real Thing!," was
headed by top officials of Coca-Cola headed by its president David Lyons and the
BSP led by Secretary General J. Rizal C. Pangilinan.
The group will plant more than 500 saplings at the BSP's Camp
Abuyod in Teresa, Rizal and managed by the Rizal Council. The saplings were
produced in BSP's own nursery at its national office in Ermita, Manila.
Under the program, scouts will plant trees and go back to the
camp to nurture them until they grow to become fully-grown trees. The concept is
called "tree parenting."
Jose Eduardo C. Delgado, Program Committee Chairman of the
BSP National Executive Board, said the program veers from the "old way" of tree
planting and then forgetting about the seedlings.
"Later on you find out only 20 percent of those trees ever
survived through adulthood. Why don't we think of starting them from seedlings,
teach the Boy Scouts about the life process of a tree, plant them in Boy
Scout-controlled properties where the Scouts themselves will take care of them
and watch the trees actually become a forest," he said.
Pangilinan said the tree planting in Rizal will be replicated
in other areas of the country.
With the two-million strong BSP movement, the group estimates
that two million trees would be planted nationwide.
Coca-Cola has advocated environmental protection and preservation by engaging
in initiatives like river councils, tree planting and watershed preservation to
help ensure that future generations continue to have a sustainable environment.
