Brother supports Rainforest Revolution campaign

To celebrate its 10th birthday, Brother International Europe’s corporate charity Cool Earth is launching its Rainforest Revolution campaign.

Brother has proudly supported Cool Earth since 2009, making the print and technology specialist one of the charity’s longest-standing partners.

Cool Earth works alongside indigenous villages to halt rainforest destruction, putting local people back in control and giving them the resources they need to keep their forest intact.

Starting with the Asháninka community in Central Peru, Cool Earth is now working with communities in Papua New Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo. With the help of Brother, the charity has more rainforest under protection by local people than any government or non-governmental organisation. In the Peru partnership, forest loss is around 27% lower than surrounding areas.

Brother has been proud to support Cool Earth for the past eight years through its free return and recycle scheme, which is designed for customers across Europe to return their used inkjet and toner cartridges.

The free Brother scheme sees one tree protected for every eight inkjet cartridges or four toner cartridges received.

Brother’s efforts alone have kept 4.3 million trees standing and protected 7,400 acres of rainforest since 2010. This has resulted in 2.1 million fewer tonnes of climate warming CO₂ in the atmosphere.

Given its rich history in sewing machines, Brother was also delighted to make a special donation to the JODAN sewing group in Papua New Guinea last year. Three home sewing machines were shipped to the women’s sewing circle, created to teach young children to sew as a life skill and a way to earn a living.

While hugely proud of its achievements across the globe over the past ten years, Cool Earth isn’t resting on its laurels. It believes that too often, rainforest conservation relies on short term fixes rather than initiatives with longer term benefits.

That is why allies and longstanding partners like Brother are being invited to join the Rainforest Revolution campaign and encourage others to join the movement.

Through this, Cool Earth aims to triple its number of supporters, and therefore impact, by 2020.

Cool Earth is also launching the Toolbox, a refined, version of their model that will revolutionise and scale rainforest protection using the existing Cool Earth approach.

This model, developed from a decade’s worth of Cool Earth R&D, will enable other organisations to collaborate with the growing number of indigenous communities that want to halt rainforest destruction.

Matthew Owen, Director at Cool Earth, said: “We’re excited to be celebrating our first 10 years, but realise there is plenty of work still to be done. In addition to our supporters and partners like Brother, we need more allies to help local communities protect their rainforest and for other organisations to use our model to make an even bigger impact.”

Henning Elkjær,  said: “We at Brother are proud to help celebrate Cool Earth’s first ten years and fully support its efforts to help more indigenous communities become custodians of the rainforest over the next decade. Brother fully supports the Rainforest Revolution campaign and the increased scope of work that the Toolbox model will enable, to ensure Cool Earth’s legacy can be felt long into the future.”

Join the mailing list.

Read more about Cool Earth.