Due to popular demand, Antwerp is giving away another 2,000 free trees to residents, schools and businesses. Requests are being taken until 12 October
Due to the resounding success of its tree give-away in the first half of this year, the city of Antwerp is offering another 2,000 free trees to residents. Families, schools and businesses can request a tree until 12 October.
“This same campaign earlier this year saw the 2,000 trees on offer snapped up immediately,” says environment city councillor Karim Bachar (Vooruit). “There was so much interest that our servers crashed.”
The city has decided to give residents another chance. While Bachar doesn’t say that the campaign is related to the fury over the felling of 62 trees in a residential street in the Deurne district earlier this month, he does mention it.
“We already knew that we were going to hand out more trees, but it’s now more obvious than ever that Antwerp residents feel very connected to trees and to green space in their neighbourhoods,” says Bachar.
The situation in Deurne, which brought residents out into the street in protest and led to a woolly emergency meeting of district coalition partners, was “especially due to poor communication,” says Bachar. “For us, what’s important is that we learn from this and that we end up with more trees in the city that we have today.”