Where it all started for Riforest

It all started with planting trees. With the intention of making it a more beautiful world. Just a bit greener and more smiles on people's faces. Just a little more shade and water vapour for the withered earth. More space for birds to breed and nectar for the insects.

In an area where hundreds of thousands of people have left to build a future elsewhere. The land of many generations. Ancestors have seen their land drain away and the land dries up because few saw any future in the age-old olive, fig or almond. No longer a person who annually made cuttings into seedlings. A land that had been given up.

The earth is still the same earth on which many children ran barefoot. Children who played hide and seek among the olive trees, eating fresh figs and pomegranates.

Planting trees to compensate for Co2 with Riforest

The Riforest Foundation encourages and supports poor farmers in the Rif Mountains in the ecological and economic recovery of their agricultural land. The Riforest Foundation does this by offering material support, transferring knowledge and applying principles from Permaculture science.

The foundation was founded in 2014 and in 2015 they planted the first trees in the Rif Mountains in Northern Marocco. It's a local approach. (Fruit) trees are bought from local breeders and divided among local farmers. These farmers are people who have a piece of land but no money to buy trees and plant them.

Donation of 5000 trees

As partial compensation for future Nomios business travel and employee commuting (part of scope 1-2), Nomios has donated 5,000 trees to the Riforest foundation, to compensate for future Nomios CO2 emissions. The first trees are now being planted (view certificate). The trees will be planter over a period of time, as it is still a small scale foundation they will not be able to plant the trees all at once.

A tree for every sold Nomios optic

In the first quarter of 2022, Nomios Netherlands started its first sustainable initiative: the Nomios optic. This is a new product line that we offer to our customers and for each optic sold we plant a tree in the Rif Mountains. With this tree, we compensate for the CO2 emission of the optic. In the first two quarters of 2022, we have sold almost 300 optics and this number keeps growing.

Visiting the Riforest project

In May 2022 a Nomios group visited the Riforest Foundation and project in Morocco. They went there to find out where the action takes place and meet the people behind the foundation in person. During this trip, they symbolically planted the first Nomios trees in the Rif Mountains.

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