Trees increase property values

Real estate values increase when trees beautify a property or neighbourhood. Trees can increase the property value of your home by 15 per cent or more.

Trees reduce electricity needed to run A/C units

Shade resulting in cooling is what trees are best known for. It reduces the need for air conditioning in summer; studies have shown that parts of cities without cooling shade from trees can be as much as 12°F hotter than surrounding areas.

Trees lower heating bills

During windy and cold seasons trees located on the windward side act as windbreaks. This can lower home heating bills by up to 30 per cent. A reduction in wind can also reduce the drying effect on soil and vegetation behind the windbreak and help keep precious topsoil in place.

Trees clean the air

Trees help cleanse the air by intercepting airborne particles, reducing heat, and absorbing such pollutants as carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. They remove the pollution by lowering air temperature through respiration, and by retaining particulates.

Trees clean the soil

The term phytoremediation is a fancy word for the absorption of dangerous chemicals and other pollutants that have entered the soil. Trees can either store harmful pollutants or change them into less harmful forms. Trees filter sewage and farm chemicals, reduce the effects of animal wastes, clean roadside spills and clean water run-off into streams.

Trees produce oxygen

A mature leafy tree produces as much oxygen in one season as 10 people inhale in a year.

Trees fight global warming

To produce its food, a tree absorbs and locks away carbon dioxide — the global warming culprit — in its wood, roots and leaves. A forest is a carbon storage area or a “sink” that can lock up as much carbon as it produces. This locking-up process stores carbon as wood and not as an available greenhouse gas.

Trees control noise pollution

Trees muffle urban noise almost as effectively as stone walls. Those planted at strategic points in a neighbourhood or around your house can abate major noises from freeways and airports.

Trees fight soil erosion

Erosion control has always started with tree and grassplanting projects. Tree roots bind the soil and their leaves break the force of wind and rain on soil, thereby fighting erosion, conserving rainwater and reducing water run-off and sediment deposit after storms.

Trees slow storm water run-off

Flash flooding can be dramatically reduced by a forest or by planting trees. Underground water-holding aquifers are recharged with this slowing down of water run-off.

— FAO (Jamaica Office)