Tea saves trees with Bettys' Amazon aid (From Ilkley Gazette)
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Tea saves trees with Bettys' Amazon aid
9:00am Tuesday 18th September 2012 in Local news By Jonathan Redhead
Kate I’Anson, a waitress at Bettys, serves afternoon tea to Sam Gibson, Bettys and Taylors’ ethical projects officer, overlooking the Yorkshire Dales National Park near Bolton Abbey
Thermos flasks and curled-up sandwiches were forgotten in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales as walkers came across afternoon tea with a difference.
Complete with table, three-tier cake stand, silverware and waitress, family firm Bettys and Taylors of Harrogate chose Storiths Crag – on the Bolton Abbey estate – to mark the completion of the first phase of a project that has seen £750,000 raised in three years to help protect an area of Peruvian rainforest roughly the same size as the Yorkshire Dales.
The company has been particularly environmentally-conscious since 1990, when it pledged to plant one million trees worldwide. After planting more than three million trees, the business turned its attention to rainforest protection.
Now, thanks to the support of staff and customers, including those at its Ilkley cafe, the campaign has helped to protect 237,000 hectares of endangered Amazo-nian rainforest in Peru.
But the firm says this is just the start; the long-term aim is to protect 1.5 million hectares of rainforest – an area the same size as Yorkshire.
“We’ve been bowled over with the support we’ve received for our campaign,” said Sam Gibson, Bettys and Taylors’ ethical projects officer.
“Yorkshire Tea and Taylors Coffee drinkers have saved thousands of tokens, and Bettys customers have attended events and purchased fundraising specialities.
“We’ve received fund-raising support from schools, Yorkshire cricketers’ ‘runs for the rainforest’ and the region’s finest and most famous writers putting forward their own theory on just who Betty might be for our Who Was Betty? book.”
Money raised to date has supported the Rainforest Foundation UK’s work in the Selva Central region of Peru, ensuring the 10,000-strong Ashaninka rainforest comm-unity have the knowledge and resources needed to stay in their ancestral home.
“The Ashaninka are on the front-line of an environmental battle that could impact us all,” Miss Gibson added.
“Helping them protect the rainforest is protecting the planet for us all.”
