Once upon a time, there was a tree...

Dear readers,

I've done strange things on this blog, like writing an ode to traffic lights. And, brace yourselves, here comes another love letter - this time, addressed to the most essential servant of all writers and journalists: the tree.

Bäume sind Gedichte, die die Erde in den Himmel schreibt. Wir fällen sie nieder und verwandeln sie in Papier, um unsere Leere zu dokumentieren.

Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness.

(Khalil Gibran, Lebanese-American writer and poet)

According to the environmental office in Munich, Germany, every fifth tree that is felled is used to make paper. Twenty percent of those trees are taken from rain forests.
Every year, each person on this earth uses an average of 52 kg of paper. In Germany, this number is five times as much, at about 250 kg.
The amount of paper used has grown continuously over the last centuries, as has the tropical deforestation.

source: Greenpeace Aachen

So now it's time to do something against this development. This is why I'm taking part in the campaign "One blog, one tree". It's very simple: I write a blog entry about trees, and the software company ITSTH in cooparation with I plant a tree will plant a beech tree for me.