Earth Day may only come once a year and 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of #Earth Day.  In honour of this milestone and as part of our greening iniative at Guvon Hotels & Spas our sales team handed out over 300 Spekboom cuttings to our clients prior to lockdown. It was our way to create awareness about the need to reduce the tourism industry’s carbon footprint and the impact it has on the environment.

As a special ‘pay it forward’ these humble but mighty Spekboom cuttings that were distributed can potentially produce 200 trees each in just two years – which have the capacity to produce 60 000 spekboom trees in just 4 years.

Why the Speknoom?
Spekboom, is a succulent tree native to the Karoo region of South Africa. Also known as Portulacaria Afra or Elephant’s Food, and can grow upto between 2 and 5 meters tall and can live up to 200 years.

The plant is easy to grow and is very resilient – it can survive frost, drought, and fire.  As with most trees, Spekboom absorbs carbon from the air to make plant tissue. Unlike most trees it is the degree to which this little miricle plant can reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Studie have shown that one tree captures 4 to 8 kg per year when it is mature, that means spekboom is about 100 times more effective at reducing carbon than a pine tree.

We have done our part to protect mother earth, have you?

Happy Earth Day!

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#earth
#earthday
#gogreen