Anthem grows 2390 trees as part of its Green Friday campaign

Step aside Black Friday, it’s about time we mixed things up a little. Introducing Anthem’s 2020 Green Friday campaign…

At Anthem, we felt that Black Friday, with all its throwaway consumerist associations, had had its day. So for 2020, we decided to mix things up a little by supporting Green Friday instead.

What is Green Friday?

Green Friday was set up in opposition to Black Friday with the aim of raising awareness of the waste that Black Friday was encouraging. When everything is incredibly cheap, people don’t think about what they’re buying, if they even need it, and the real cost that poor quality, mass manufactured goods have on the environment.

Instead, Green Friday encourages people to shop ethically and sustainably, or perhaps not even shop at all.

How Anthem took up the Green Friday challenge

At Anthem we still wanted to give our customers a good value deal, and we believe that our magazines are a collector’s item rather than a throwaway purchase anyway.

So we offered a good discount on the subscription price, but added an extra incentive to sign up.

For every subscription purchased, 10 trees will be grown.

As expected, this really appealed to our mindful audiences of vegans, runners and colourists.

Once the campaign closed, we made a donation of £358.50 to More Trees, which will mean that a total of 2,390 trees will be grown on our behalf.

What our Green Friday money will be used for at More Trees

More Trees is a not-for-profit organisation, which plants and protects trees in the Bath And North-East Somerset area.

Anthem’s donation will be used to help fund the community tree nursery, where the volunteers that run the organisation are growing trees from seed and cuttings, which will later be planted in the local area.

Where will the trees get planted once they’ve grown?

It will take a while for our seeds to grow into saplings that can be planted outside, but once they get to that stage, there are many places they could end up.

Here are a few of the projects More Trees are involved with at the moment…

They are helping to replant trees at Heather Farm in Bath. Eight years ago, the farmer planted hundreds of trees as part of a Forestry Commission scheme. Some of the trees have failed (mainly due to Ash Die-Back Disease), and so More Trees have replanted 180 trees over the course of just two weekends.

The new owner of Warleigh Weir Island, Claverton (on the edge of Bath) is very keen on sustainability and so More Trees have partnered with them to plant hundreds of trees there.

They have already planted over 500 trees over the last couple of years, mainly varieties that cope well in wet conditions, as the field floods regularly. These saplings are thriving, and will help reduce flooding further downstream. In January, they will be planting an orchard here.

We can’t wait to see our donation turn into something that will have such a great impact on the environment.

It just goes to show that with a little innovation you can come up with campaigns that fulfill your business objectives, but still manage to closely align with your core values as a company.