Trees Add Value to Our Lives
Trees bring immense value to our lives. They provide us with oxygen, cool our cities, and offer numerous other benefits that impact various aspects of our lives. Not only are they beneficial for the planet, but they also positively affect our health!
Being around trees can make you feel more at peace. Just seeing a tree can help you heal faster, lift your mood, and make you feel more connected to nature.
Rebecca V., a blogger from Portland, Oregon, loves spending time among trees. For her, the benefits of trees go beyond their beauty; they enhance her quality of life. “Trees lighten my mood, no matter what is going on in the rest of my life,” she says.
“A walk in the forest near my home always makes me feel more relaxed,” adds Rebecca. “I’ll stop and place my hand against the trunk of a tree, or stand and lean against it for a moment. It feels as though the tension is drawn from me and into the tree. I feel renewed after time with the trees — ready to go back and face the world.”
6 Amazing Benefits of Trees
Have you ever thought about all the incredible benefits trees provide or how empty the world would look without them? We’re fortunate to live on a planet with such diverse and majestic plant life.
Whether you plant a tree, take a walk among them, or donate to support tree-planting efforts, let’s all appreciate the beauty of trees and forests around the world and the gifts they give us. Here are six top benefits that trees provide.
Trees Cheer You Up!
When Kaecey M., a creativity coach from Cupertino, California, feels down, she heads for the trees. “Ever since I was a small child, I’d escape to the sanctuary of trees when I felt sad or alone. Somehow being around them made me feel like I was part of something bigger than myself, and my mood would lift. As an adult, I often find myself feeling more content or at peace after spending time in the woods,” says Kaecey.
Adults with depression who spent time in the forest, also known as forest bathing, felt better. Forest therapy can range from simply walking among the trees for a couple of hours to meditating in a forest. These adults noted higher self-esteem and improved mood after forest therapy. Bottom line: trees are good for your mental health!
Trees Help You Heal Faster
If you’re physically unwell, spending more time in nature can help. For instance, stressed adults who spent time in green spaces instead of urban environments had lower blood pressure and a slower heart rate.
Natural environments, including forests, help you reach a more positive state of mind, which in turn affects your body’s physiology and overall wellness. Sick people with exposure to nature heal faster than those who don’t, even if it’s just a view through a window! Greenness around a home may even mean you live longer, especially for women!
One reason people feel more stressed and sick is that we have separated ourselves from nature. We’ve spent less than 0.01 percent of our history on this planet in urban environments. While our bodies are adapted to living in nature, we’re mostly living in cities, which can stress your body and mind.
Trees Reduce Air Pollution & Improve Respiratory Health
Trees absorb many toxic pollutants from our environment. In the United States alone, trees and forests remove 17.4 million tons of pollution per year.
Experts value the human health effects of these trees at $6.8 billion! These forests eliminate an estimated 670,000 cases of acute respiratory symptoms and save 850 lives.
Imagine how much better our air and health would be if we planted more trees!
If you live in a city, you’ve probably heard about air quality and high ozone concentrations. At ground level, ozone becomes a major component of the smog that causes haze on the horizon in many cities. This smog negatively affects human health. For several decades, smog levels have been rising, but trees can remove ozone and improve air quality.
Trees Provide Oxygen
It almost goes without saying, but trees literally give us the breath of life: oxygen. “Trees are like the lungs of our Earth,” says Milana P., an author from Salt Lake City, Utah. “They nourish us with oxygen while taking away our carbon dioxide and ask for nothing in return.”
Trees provide us with oxygen during photosynthesis, absorbing the carbon dioxide people and animals expel. In this process, plants combine carbon dioxide with water and sunlight to make plant sugars and oxygen, which they release into the air.
A single tree can provide enough oxygen for four people. And of course, trees provide food and shelter to birds and other wildlife.
Trees Counteract Climate Change
As trees give out oxygen, they also absorb carbon dioxide (CO2), which we expel in our breath. Cars, factories, and other industrial processes also produce CO2. As concerns about climate change and global warming increase, planting more trees is one part of the solution.
One tree can absorb 48 pounds of CO2 from the air every year. While the ultimate solution is reducing dependence on unsustainable fossil fuels, planting trees is a proactive step that everyone can take.
On a bigger scale, if we reforest an extra 2 billion acres, the trees could store an additional 275 million tons of carbon dioxide. This would increase the total amount of stored carbon dioxide in trees around the world by 25 percent. Yet 15 percent of the world’s trees are at risk of extinction. Planting trees and supporting global reforestation efforts is more important than ever before.
Trees Cool Cities
Did you know that trees are like nature’s air conditioners? In urban areas, you often end up with an “urban heat island,” where the city stays several degrees hotter than the surrounding rural areas.
This well-known phenomenon occurs because parking lots, asphalt, and buildings absorb heat during the day and warm the surrounding air. In contrast, trees cool things down by offering shade and through evapotranspiration — the process by which plants “breathe.”
If you want to save energy in your home and make it feel cooler in the summer, plant more trees around it. Trees even save you money on your electric bill: When a tree offers direct shade to your home, you’ll use less air conditioning. A shaded surface can be 20 to 45 degrees (11 to 25 degrees Celsius) cooler than one without shade. Wow!
How to Plant a Tree
The easiest way to increase your views of trees is to plant a few. While Earth Day helps us think of planting more trees and giving back, make sure to plant a tree at the right time for your climate. You can often get free trees from the Arbor Day Foundation or the U.S. Forest Service at certain times of the year.
Generally, early fall and late summer are the best times to plant (unless you live in a more tropical climate). Even though springtime is not the ideal time to plant trees, you can always buy potted trees for the greenery and benefits they provide, then plant them at a later time.
Do your research. Depending on your location and other factors, choose a tree that can handle your weather, soil, sunlight, and pets. You’ll also want to avoid planting near power lines or other structures that can be damaged by tree limbs or roots.
Once you’ve found the right tree, dig a hole twice as wide and a little shallower than the root ball. After placing the tree in the hole, fill it with soil and remove any air pockets. Water the tree, then add mulch around it.
In the first couple of years, you may find it beneficial to water the tree in dry weather. Once it grows, it will require less tree care.
How Global Healing Gives Back
At Global Healing, we love trees! We have planted thousands of trees over the past years, mainly with One Tree Planted. In 2019, our donations helped replace 5,000 trees lost in the California wildfires, and we have also supported tree planting after the Australian bush fires. We plan to continue supporting efforts to plant trees and support the environment as a core part of our mission.
Global Healing employees have engaged in volunteer efforts to plant trees in Houston, and the company has donated to groups that plant trees in Africa as well as those supporting sustainable, organic farming initiatives, among other things. Our company philosophy is rooted in a green philosophy. We use recyclable packaging materials, use certified organic, non-GMO ingredients, and source plant materials responsibly.
