Kent County Council has become the first local authority in the UK to sign up to a free scheme meaning when documents are printed, a tree is planted.

Working in partnership with our printing supplier, Xerox, we have gained this added benefit via their agreement with PrintReleaf to help reduce the loss of forests globally.

For every 8,333 pages printed by the council, a tree will be planted.

KCC runs a managed print service which has significantly reduced costs to the council, whilst encouraging greater use of technology to avoid unnecessary printing and reducing pages printed.

The current PrintReleaf scheme offers a choice of locations around the world, which are at significant risk of tree loss.

KCC has decided that trees will be planted in Brazil where the remaining Atlantic forest is in far greater danger of disappearing than the more renowned Amazon Rainforest.

The PrintReleaf objective in Brazil is to plant 700,000 to a million trees a year, restoring 350 to 500 ha of large continuous forest corridors every year.

KCC’s Director of Infrastructure Rebecca Spore said: “We are very pleased to be the first local authority in the UK to sign up to this scheme.

“KCC is committed to the environment across all of our services, delivering the Kent Environment Strategy priorities and the targets we have set.

“As a large local authority with a lot of printing often required, being able to directly benefit the global environment with PrintReleaf, is an added bonus.”