At Southwest Airlines, our Heart doesn’t just give back—it gives forward and we are always looking for ways we can best support the communities around us. Today is Earth Day and in celebration of honoring the earth’s precious resources and our 50th anniversary, we are working with the National Forest Foundation (NFF) to plant 1,000 trees for each of our 50 years of service. That’s an incredible 50,000 trees that will be planted throughout California, Georgia, and Oregon in service of the Planet!
As the trees grow, the carbon they can sequester is equivalent to an estimated 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.* That is similar to emissions from a 737-800 flying 2,700 times between Dallas and Houston, or the emissions of approximately 45,000 passengers flying roundtrip between Oakland and Honolulu.** This reforestation effort will help support wildfire recovery, restore native ecosystems, improve water and air quality, mitigate climate change, and reduce soil erosion and heat island effect.
In honor of Earth Day, we encourage you to donate to NFF by visiting swa.is/treeplanting. For every dollar donated, one tree will be planted – supporting efforts to conserve our nation's forest, watersheds, wildlife, and recreation resources. Every donation will also count towards our one million Acts of Kindness challenge!
Protecting our Planet for future generations is important to Southwest and we’re excited to facilitate projects that help support our drive to be a good environmental steward. As a Company, it’s important we take meaningful steps to reduce our environmental footprint and preserve our Planet’s resources. In addition to working with like-minded organizations such as NFF, Southwest is also committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. We recognize conservation can be more impactful when we all work together for a more sustainable future.
*Per tree carbon estimates provided by the NFF. Carbon sequestration from this project will not be converted to carbon offsets.
** Estimated using fuel consumption data from The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for Boeing 737-800 aircraft