By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent LANSING, Mich. — Interested in getting more money for your state to plant more trees?
Anyone can do it with little more than a click of the mouse.
The Odwalla Juice Co., a division of Coca-Cola, is in the midst of its third annual Plant-A-Tree program and is donating $200,000 toward it this year. That’s twice what it donated last year.
The people at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment’s Division of Recreation want to encourage residents of the state to participate, since it received $50,000 Plant-A-Tree program dollars in 2009. Last year only a few states participated, but this year all states are able to join in the competition.
As of two weeks ago, 57,706 trees had been planted in 2010 across the country because of the program.
“This goes towards the purchase of trees exclusively,” said Cheryl Greaney, a spokeswoman for Michigan’s recreation division. “It’s a wonderful thing.”
Voting began May 25 and will continue until Aug. 15 or until the money runs out. Each vote is worth $1. When last tallied, Pennsylvania, Texas and California were leading the country in Plant-A-Tree votes: Pennsylvania had 6,984, Texas 6,196 and California 4,013.
In the Farm World readership area Michigan had 3,589, Ohio 1,405, Indiana 1,900, Illinois 1,127, Kentucky 1,274, Tennessee 1,348 and Iowa 277.
To vote, connect to the Internet and navigate to the Odwalla designated website, listed below. Since the website has many graphics and is set up to play video, it might be a problem for dial-up users – for those individuals an area library might provide a faster connection.
The website starts out with a map of the country; just click on the desired state. After that, click on the “start here” button. Some users will get a code to enter, but not all. Users are asked to provide some identifying information, but according to the company this information helps it keep track of who voted and the information isn’t divulged to anyone else.
Odwalla’s Plant-A-Tree website is at www.odwalla.com/plantatree |
