FROM May 1 Virgin Cars has been planting a tree for every car it sells, regardless of make or model, to help raise awareness of carbon dioxide emissions and global warming.

Global warming occurs because most activities we do, from driving to cooking to watching TV, create carbon dioxide, which is a contributor to global warming. Virgin Cars already provides customers with information about all its cars’ carbon dioxide emissions, and this initiative is the next step.

Virgin Cars’ chosen partner to tackle this issue is Future Forests: a company whose aim it is to encourage people and companies to take practical action against global warming. It does this by showing them how they can reduce emissions, and then enabling them to ‘offset’ the remainder, by, for example, planting native trees in public access woodland all over the world to absorb carbon dioxide.

Customers of Virgin Cars will also have the opportunity to plant additional trees if they wish, to offset all their cars’ carbon dioxide emissions, thereby making their driving Carbon Neutral®.

For example, somebody buying a Peugeot 206 1.1 LX AC would need to plant an extra three trees to make their driving Carbon Neutral®*. Someone driving a Volkswagen Golf 1.8 GTI would need to plant an extra four trees, a driver of a BMW Series 5 Estate 525i would need to plant another five trees, while an extra six trees are required to combat the emissions of a Jeep Grand Cherokee 2.7 CRD Limited.

Anyone wishing to buy trees to become Carbon Neutral® drivers or citizens can do so by clicking onto www.futureforests.com.

To work out how much carbon dioxide your car emits, visit the website at www.virgin.com/cars, select your car, and then look up how many trees need to be planted.