September/October 2017 | The Davey Bulletin 23
Pictured back row from left are Dan Gillen, landscape foreman, Albany R/C office,
Bryant Merkley, assistant district manager, Albany R/C office, and Bill Van Cura,
utility services operations manager at a tree planting at Glendaal Elementary School.
Greensboro Beautiful, Inc. (GBI),
the city of Greensboro and over 50
volunteers planted 104 trees for their
first community carbon bank in
February at Price Park.
Keith Francies, southeast operations
manager, Residential/Commercial
services, and GBI board of directors
member and co-chair of the urban
forestry committee, said a company
called Urban Offsets, who organized
the project, is working to connect
universities, non-profit organizations
and municipalities to conduct more
tree plantings that count toward
carbon credits.
TREES AS CARBON
BANKS GENERATE
BIG RETURNS
Elon University purchased the credits
from this planting to help offset their
carbon output. Students from the
university participated in the planting.
"We do a lot of community tree
plantings, but this one was different
because there's a true monetary value
being assigned to each tree by species
and how much carbon the tree will
capture over its lifetime," Francies said.
The money from the carbon credits
is going into a tree fund for future
tree plantings and preservation efforts,
he said.
At Glendaal Elementary in Glenville,
New York, Colleen (Van Cura) Monaco's
students and members of the school
newspaper learned fun facts about the
serviceberry tree planted on Arbor Day
at their school.
Members of Davey's Albany R/C
office and Colleen's dad, Bill Van Cura,
operations manager, Eastern Utility
services, told the children various facts
about the tree, such as the tree having
inedible berries and white flowers.
FIRST GRADERS
LEARN ABOUT
NEW TREE
The volunteers received a proper tree planting demonstration and
were broken up into smaller groups with a planting supervisor
during the planting. Photo Credit: Greensboro Beautiful, Inc.