Rainforest Trust celebrated Earth Day by launching two month-long initiatives, participating in several events across the country and hosting its first annual Earth Day of Service at its headquarters in Warrenton, VA.

“Celebrating Earth Day is an important tradition for Rainforest Trust,” said Rainforest Trust CEO Dr. Paul Salaman. “It gives us a great opportunity to raise awareness about the importance of maintaining our planet’s critical ecosystems. It is also a chance for our team to participate locally in activities to protect the planet.”

The two initiatives include an electronics recycling drive in partnership with ALC Recycling and a social media hashtag campaign with N3TWORK Legendary Games of Heroes. Both of these campaigns are still available to participate in! For the electronics recycling drive, Rainforest Trust is collecting unwanted products like flat-screen televisions, computers and cellphones at the Airlie Headquarters Monday through Friday 9am – 5pm until April 30.

To help spread the message of conservation in honor of Earth Day, for every social media post and share from April 1-30 that includes the #SeeTheRainforestFor hashtag, N3TWORK will save one acre of tropical habitat through Rainforest Trust. This campaign is being shared internationally with Rainforest Trust’s local partners in the field, as well as with all the visitors to and participants in the organization’s other Earth Day events.

N3TWORK raised its $75,000 donation to support the purchase of one acre for each use of the hashtag #SeeTheRainforestFor by developing an opportunity for its gamers to earn virtual coins for Rainforest Trust. In the company’s Legendary: Game of Heroes, it modified its system of awarding coins or tokens to appropriately represent Rainforest Trust’s brand to tie into this mechanic.

“Rainforest Trust is doing incredible work to protect the most threatened tropical forests and saving endangered wildlife,”

said Neil Young, founder and CEO of N3TWORK. “We are happy to do our part and support their efforts through a fun in-game event to celebrate Earth Day, where players can help raise funds and awareness for Rainforest Trust.”

Rainforest Trust expanded its local environmental activities with its first full day of service on Saturday, April 21. In addition to running the electronics recycling drive for the day, participants picked up trash along the stretch of route 605 named Airlie Road where Rainforest Trust’s offices are located as part of Virginia Department of Transportation’s Adopt-a-Highway program. Volunteers also conducted a plant installation project in partnership with Fauquier County Parks and Recreation at Rady Park in Warrenton, VA.

“We were incredibly pleased with how many people came out and volunteered with us for Earth Day,” said Rainforest Trust Chief Outreach Officer Marc Ford. “We believe our efforts were both positive and impactful for our local community and our planet.”

The Adopt-a-Highway team covered the entire three mile stretch of road, gathering enough trash to fill nearly 15 trash bags, while the Rady Park team dug flower beds, planted four trees and multiple flowers and then laid mulch to complete the project.

Volunteers were treated to a free picnic lunch provided through a $500 PATH Foundation grant, as well as donations from Chick-fil-a, Giant, Great Harvest, Pizza Hut, Red Hot and Blue and Wegmans. There were also games, arts and crafts made with recycled materials and a forest fire presentation from the Warrenton Volunteer Fire Department in partnership with Virginia’s Department of Forestry.

For the second year in a row, Rainforest Trust attended the Earth Day 50 Challenge, a summit comprising nearly 100 corporate, environmental, academic and philanthropic leaders held alongside EARTHx in Dallas, Texas. Together, these two events ran from April 18-22.

At the Challenge, Rainforest Trust Chief Conservation Officer Dr. George Wallace participated in a panel entitled, Forests: Safeguarding the Final 15%, speaking about the importance of protecting the world’s remaining intact forests and how nongovernmental conservation organizations and corporations can partner to make it happen.

“Many of the world’s largest corporations have global impacts that could be at least partially mitigated by locking arms with the conservation community and working together to protect these vital forest landscapes,” noted Dr. Wallace.

“Intact forests hold vast numbers of species that, while not threatened now, will join the ranks of Earth’s imperiled species if these forests become fragmented or lost altogether. Time is short, the stakes are high, but success is absolutely within reach.”

Rainforest Trust also set up information booths and engaged approximately 150,000 environmentally-conscious people at EARTHx from April 20-22; a couple thousand people at the US Botanic Garden’s 2018 Earth Day Open House on Friday, April 20; and several families at Airlie Conference Center’s Earth Day on Sunday, April 22.

Rainforest Trust would like to thank all of its partners that made this Earth Day a great success!