As we celebrate Earth Day tomorrow, we offered four supporters 25 trees each in our Arsenal Forest in Kenya – if they could tell us how they are living more sustainably.
We had some fantastic responses and we even had quite a number from different regions of Kenya – the power of social media – so we have decided to include two from east Africa and two from the UK.
First up, Arsenal-supporting farmer Daniel Wambua (above) from Makueni county in Kenya has taken lots of steps recently to make his business more sustainable. He tells us, “I grow my own food on my farm and don’t use fertiliser or pesticides on the crops – instead I use animal manure from the cows and chicken and grind neem tree leaves to make effective pesticide. This reduces the risks associated with pesticides and fertilisers to our environment.
“I also collect plastic water bottles and use them for drip irrigation system on mango and orange trees in my farm. This reduces the harm plastics cause to our environment like being carried and dumped into oceans. The drip irrigation enables my mango and orange trees make it through the hot and dry seasons of the year.”
Emma, aged seven, keeps bees in her back garden!
Closer to home, brilliant seven-year-old supporter Emma tells us about some very special friends at home...
“In my garden, we keep Mason bees which are very friendly and can’t sting! They help the environment by pollinating our flowers and our fruit and vegetables that we grow. Bees help us and we can help them by planting more flowers and more trees, so we should be friendly to them because they’re friendly to us.
“We started off with 25 baby Mason bee cocoons, and each year we have had more and more. Me and my sister Millie love watching the baby mason bees hatch out of their cocoons and flying off. Every night we check our special observation drawer as we can see all the pollen they have collected during the day. When they have lots of pollen, they lay their eggs with it for the babies to eat. We can then watch the eggs change into cocoons ready for the next year. Me and my sister have named two of them Teeny and Tiny.”
Meanwhile, Enfield-based Nicole Hayes tells us, “I try to live sustainably and therefore I no longer eat fish and cut out most meats and dairy from my diet too.
“I have planted loads of plants in my garden that bees love. You can also get bee saving-starter kits from Friends Of The Earth and I have also cut down on the amount of clothing I buy as so many clothes get thrown away and are wasted each year, which is bad for the environment.”
Nicole from Enfield is also a friend to the bees thanks to her well stocked garden
Finally, our second Arsenal-supporting Kenyan correspondent is business owner Mugo Gitau who told us, “I am the founder of Noma Green Plastics, where we recycle plastic waste into poles used for fencing and light construction.
“Getting trees from Arsenal would feed into a program where we give out tree seedlings to our customers. This comes from the insight that most of our customers are fencing/building on land that has been cleared of its vegetative cover, giving then seedlings helps replenish the land.
“I have been a mega Arsenal fan for as long as I can remember. The club’s class and work in the community is a massive reason why we are the Arsenal.”
Wonderful sustainable stories from four environmentally conscious fans. Details of your trees in our Forest are on their way.
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