Here at Natusan, reducing the impact of being a pet parent on the environment is at the heart of everything we do.
As well as using by-products of sustainable forestry to make our litter, and transforming waste into wonder with our composting partners, we also plant a tree for every single order!
To date, thanks to customers like you, we have already planted over 14,600 trees, and reduced 52.99 tonnes of CO2e* - the equivalent of 131,468 miles by car, or 159 square metres of sea ice saved**!
Thanks to our customers we are also able to support wonderful Gold Standard carbon reduction projects around the world, here is one of the projects Natusan is supporting this month.
Protecting old-growth rainforest in Peru
Madre de Dios is the third-largest region of Peru and home to much of the Peruvian Amazon. It is also the least densely populated.
The area has seen many conservation challenges over the years, including the extraction of the region's rich natural resources such as timber, rubber and alluvial gold.
The completion of the Trans-Oceanic Highway in 2011, which links Brazil and Peru, presented further challenges to conservation efforts, as did the sudden expansion of the nearby town of Puerto Maldonado, which also so a large increase in illegal logging.
Many in the local community are reliant on the old-growth rainforest, but providing protection from deforestation and degradation has been a challenge.
Therefore, the top priorities in the region are supporting the community in efforts to both safeguard the precious rainforest and establish sustainable sources of income for the inhabitants of the area.
Bertholletia excelsa - or the Brazil nut tree to you and me - is one of the largest and oldest trees found in the Amazon. The trees can grow up to 50m in height, and live for over 500 years!
Known for their rich amounts of minerals and vitamins, Brazil nuts are a valuable and important non-timber forest product, and when harvested in a passive way, this provides a sustainable way for generations to provide income from a tropical forest without harming it.
The Brazil nut concessions project allows the local community to produce reliable, sustainable income through passive harvesting.
This method of harvesting incentivises the protection of the forest, and in turn its carbon sinking capabilities, since Brazil nut trees can only be found in old-growth forests.
The project has also built a brand new processing facility, which expands a formerly subsistence role into a profitable and viable income source for the community, who also receive carbon finance income that is generated by the protection of the rainforest.
So far, the project has been successful in its goal of protecting the rainforest from degradation and deforestation. There has been little evidence of activities such as illegal logging, which could disturb the biomass within the project boundary, and carbon storage per hectare has increased since the project began in 2010.
Also incorporated within the Brazil nut concessions project activity is an outreach programme that helps local communities understand the many benefits of keeping the rainforest intact, including the effects on the climate and safeguarding endangered and threatened species.
This project is verified by the the Verified Carbon Standard and Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard. You can view it on the Verra Registry.
Find out more about protecting old-growth rainforest in Peru.
So next time you fill up your cat’s litter tray, you can feel paw-sitive that you are helping to create a better, greener world.
Learn more about our partnership with Ecologi.
*The US Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon emissions calculator estimates that 2481 miles (3992.7 km) emits 1 tonne of CO2.
**A 2016 research paper published in November’s issue of Science Magazine, found that the loss of Arctic sea ice had a linear relationship to CO2 emissions. This rate is 3 ± 0.3 square metres per tonne of CO2.
22/06/2021 by NatuTeam