Aldi is on the road to meeting its target of planting 1m trees by 2025, as it planted its 400,000th tree on Wednesday 2 March.

Aldi Ireland celebrated planting the milestone native Irish tree with Irish rugby player James Ryan in Kill, Co Kildare.

The tree planting took place ahead of International Day of Forests on 21 March, the international celebration which aims to raise awareness of the importance of all types of forests.

Removing emissions

According to Aldi, planting 1m trees will see more than 160,000t of carbon emissions removed from the atmosphere over a 100-year period.

This equates to roughly 640m kilometres driven by an average passenger vehicle (or the emissions from about 400 cars each year), 68m litres of petrol consumed, or 20bn smartphones charged, enough to charge all of Ireland’s smartphones almost 47 times over each year.

The native tree plantations create a wildlife corridor for native species and enable grassland to revert to more natural vegetation, further enhancing biodiversity in the local area.

Aldi buying director Laura Harper and Irish rugby star James Ryan. / Jeff Harvey

The initiative is being carried out in partnership with the Department of Agriculture’s Woodland Environment Fund (WEF), under which Irish businesses can partner with landowners and the Department to establish new native woodlands, as opposed to non-native species such as Sitka Spruce.

The Government’s target is to plant 22m trees a year until 2040.

The Aldi project was launched by group managing director Niall O’Connor, Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue and Minister of State Pippa Hackett in Aughrim, Co Wicklow, last year.

Nine counties

To date, trees have been planted across nine counties in Ireland, including Kerry, Cork, Galway, Mayo, Meath, Kildare, Wicklow, Cavan and Limerick.

Speaking at the tree planting event, Irish rugby player James Ryan said: “It’s fantastic that Aldi is supporting the environment and promoting local biodiversity through its tree planting commitment and I’m delighted to join the team here today in Kildare to mark the occasion.

"Planting 400,000 native Irish trees is a fantastic milestone, and it’s great to see Aldi is ahead of schedule in planting 1m.

"We all have to play our part in reducing our carbon footprint and I commend the whole Aldi team for all their hard work."

Aldi Ireland has said that it has been carbon neutral since 1 January 2019, adding that over 2,150t of virgin plastic has been removed from its entire store network.

Aldi has also replaced over 930t of non-recyclable packaging materials with recyclable alternatives.