Funds Raised Through Customer Carbon Offsets

Ryanair, Europe’s greenest/cleanest major airline, today (3 Oct) announced support for the Native Woodland Trust’s latest project in the midlands – where the Trust will create a new ancient woodland nursery, using the seeds of trees in the nearby St. John’s Wood in Co. Roscommon.

The Native Woodland Trust (NWT) is committed to saving the last of Ireland’s remaining ancient woodlands, through education, raising awareness and direct intervention. NWT is also focussed on the restoration and expansion of these relict forests, through their re-creation, using only tree seed collected locally.

As part of NWT’s partnership with Ryanair, the new woodland will be planted on what was once farmland, using seeds collected just 500 metres away in St. John’s wood. This latest project will not only offset tonnes of carbon but will also support the local diversity in the area such as bees, butterflies and birds as well as larger mammals such as pine martins and red squirrels.

Support for this partnership is funded through carbon offset donations – Ryanair customers can now offset the carbon cost of their flight by making a voluntary donation to our climate charity partners at the end of the booking process. Ryanair has also partnered with First Climate, Renature Monchique, and Irish Whale and Dolphin Group which carry out projects in Uganda, Portugal and Ireland respectively.

Ryanair’s Chief Marketing Officer, Kenny Jacobs said:

 “We are delighted to support the NWT, through our customer’s carbon offset donations, in their latest afforestation project. This initiative will not only offset tonnes of carbon but is integral for the support of Ireland’s biodiversity. We’re extremely excited to see this farmland be turned back into woodland all thanks to the great work of the Native Woodland Trust.

 Ryanair is Europe’s greenest/cleanest major airline, operating the youngest fleet (average age of six years) with the highest load factors. With our carbon offsetting initiative we continue to lead the way, and we encourage our customers to continue supporting these exciting partnerships by making carbon offset donations when booking flights on the Ryanair.com website.”

NWT Chairman, Jim Lawlor said:

 “These are exciting times for us – to be able to acquire land for new woodland and to be able to create our own onsite tree nursery, using only the purest local seed source is a fantastic prospect. We are grateful to Ryanair and their customers for helping to create this opportunity and we are looking forward to sharing the fruits of this partnership with them.

The Native Woodland Trust is Ireland’s premier tree conservation organisation with a growing network of woodland nature reserves across the country. In addition to community based conservation and biodiversity focussed initiatives, we can now allow Ryanair customers to offset their carbon, whilst still retaining all of these other tremendous benefits to wildlife and nature.”