Canada's Tree Planting Coffee - From The Ground Up

Calgary Heritage Roasting Company was founded by Wildland Firefighters that share a passion for the outdoors and the experiences one can have in nature – so it is only natural that we wanted to preserve our environment for decades to come. Back in late 2015 when we started CHRC we agreed that it is a businesses responsibility to give back and create legacy in areas that are of great importance to those individuals or organizations. For us it was an easy choice – to give back to the place where we spend every moment of free time, the Great Outdoors! 

 

Back in 2017 we entered into our first partnership with TreeEra, a company motivated to provide accessible ways for the average person and business to combat climate change. The founder of TreeEra, Michael Fitzgerald had a hope that through these collective actions, a community would be inspired to make a difference. For us, that took the form of our “Tall Timber” roast – which planted 1 tree for every bag of coffee sold. For years the collaboration created multiple events and complementary apparel pieces which also contributed to our tree planting totals – eventually equating to just under 900 trees planted by 2020.

 

It was at this time that we were looking to become more impactful and really invest into what has now become an internal goal of the company – to plant 1 Million trees by 2030. To better accomplish this we decided to include our Buy A Bag = Plant A Tree program on all of our whole bean SKU lines. This took our contribution from a single roast to all 9 bean types we currently offer. Alongside the added planting potential, we also had a strong desire to work directly with a tree planting operation – this came in the form of Summit Reforestation out of Smithers BC. By working directly with Summit, we have gained more insight, experience and influence over where our trees are planted. So much so that we were able to join Summit for a day of planting on private land just outside of Calgary – which saw both Jamie and I get absolutely smoked by the veteran tree planters.

In our first year working with Summit Reforestation CHRC was able to plant 34,000 trees in Alberta and British Columbia. In year 2022 we were able to raise that number to 71,000. Currently with the help of our wholesale partners and customers, CHRC has contributed to over 101,000 trees planted on Canadian soil. A common saying in the tree planting world is that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now – well lucky for you, planting trees never tasted so good! 

Buy a bag of your favourite tree planting coffee HERE. 

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