Adopt a tree

Institute of Forest Ecology of Slovak Academy of Sciences and CE SPECTRA, in cooperation of Institute of circular economy organized auction of small trees. The event “Adopt a tree” was held on April 22, 2017 in Bratislava during traditional event “The good market”. Self-seeded trees were provided by local people from their yard and offered on the market for voluntary fee, or for free respectively. Beside the dissemination of awareness about urban green functions and carbon footprint reduction, we wanted to find out the willingness to pay of the local people for a tree which provide them ecosystem services (e.g. relaxation, regeneration). At the same time, it was an indirect contribution to the reduction of waste in the area, as the greenery from the local peoples’ areas did not end up in the waste but was reintroduced into the circular economy system. People liked the action, we were able to give away about 30 trees, the market visitors who completed the questionnaire, were on average willing to pay € 0.98 / tree. The project was supported by the H2020 project SIMRA – Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas.