Dylan O'Neill wants our community to battle climate change, one tree at a time.
"Think the ice-bucket challenge meets climate change."
Dylan O'Neill has set a challenge to everyone in the community to plant a tree in aid of battling against climate change.
Dylan, like many other New Zealanders, has read various articles on climate change and was particularly impacted by some research statements the Scripps Institution of Oceanography had made.
"They have been collaborating with Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, where climate scientists have been measuring CO2 levels since 1958. They had made a statement saying that 'it already seems safe to conclude that we won't be seeing a monthly value below 400 parts per million this year - or ever again for the indefinite future'."
Dylan says 400ppm has been considered by the climate science community as an important and daunting milestone that we would hopefully never reach, as reversing the effects of global warming with that amount of carbon in the atmosphere beyond that level would be significantly harder, if not near impossible.
Dylan, who is an past student of Stratford High School, says when discussing the article with old classmates the idea came about a pay-it-forward system that would see people planting more trees around the world.
"The ice-bucket challenge that went viral around the internet for a while was mentioned, and then the idea of starting a tree-planting challenge with the same model just grew from there.
"I knew it was only going to hopefully take one video to get the ball rolling, and it wasn't going to be that hard to make one. So a week later, I sat down in our garden at home in Pukengahu and recorded one."
Dylan says the challenge is simple. Record yourself planting a tree somewhere, (whether that be in your own backyard or a community planting project), nominate some friends or family to do the same, and then tag your video with #treeplantingchallenge.
There is no limit to the number of people you can nominate, and if your nominees live in a city or somewhere where they are unable to plant one, then Dylan suggests inviting them to go online and make a donation to any planting project around the world, before nominating more people.
"Even if people cannot plant directly, empowering others to plant is just as important."
There is no rule about what kind of tree you can plant and Dylan suggests seeking advice from a local garden centre about what type of tree will best flourish in your chosen garden.
"I'm hoping that this really takes off. With the reach around the world today that Facebook has, it really won't take long for it to get big. All it is going to take is for people to get excited about it and get on board."
Dylan says you don't have to wait to be nominated to get started, grab a mate or some family and start off a new chain of the challenge.
"If 100 other people just made a video now out of their own accord, then that's giving the #treeplantingchallange 100 times the chance to take off and make a difference around the globe fast."
In fact, I challenge everyone at the Stratford Press right now to each plant a tree and then send out some nominations. Cheers guys!
- CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! The team at the Stratford Press are happy to accept this challenge, but we won't be planting the trees ourselves.
We have arranged with Michelle Hight to give some local schools $50 to spend on trees of their choosing at Colson Road Nursery.
There the schools can select the tree best suited to their needs, be it a fruit tree for an orchard, or a native tree for their fields.
Thanks to Michelle at Colson Road Nursery's help, the Stratford Press team will be getting these vouchers out this week.
In turn we challenge YOU, our readers, to plant a tree over the next few weeks.
When you do, post a picture or video onto our Facebook page and add #treeplantingchallenge.