One Million Trees
Illustration’s MD Harry Lyon-Smith turns
from pale green to deep green while going
round the world and explains why the
agency has decided to donate 1% of its
turnover to planting millions of trees . . .
I should begin by saying that the irony of writing about safeguarding our
environment whilst on a two year motorcycle journey around the world
has not escaped me. That said, my travels have enabled me to witness
disturbing goings-on that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.
Like many of us, my environmental awareness is something
that has been building slowly over the last decade or two. My position
on the environment before leaving the UK in May 2011 is best described
as ‘pale green’, hence my search for transport of some kind that would
not be too environmentally expensive on what is a somewhat selfindulgent exercise. Batty, my chosen bike (see www.vegibike.com),
came to life after rejecting battery powered bikes and small scooters as
not yet fit for such a big, hard journey. I had read about diesel engines
running vegetable oil and a quick search showed that motorbikes with
diesel engines were available though only in small numbers. These
diesel engines have their problems, such as not being very fast and,
as I was to discover, recent versions refusing to adopt veg oil as a fuel.
However at that stage I was very excited about using a fuel that was
largely carbon neutral. Of course issues and challenges abound with
biofuels taking land away from food sources and rain forests, which is
no doubt true in some cases. P