Events agency engages in fruitful eco-project

Tim Waygood, managing director of MotivAction, is planting an orchard on the event company's 170-acre site.

The five and a half acre fruit orchard will hold 700 trees bearing 11 types and over 120 different local varieties, and forms part of MotivAction's 2008 environmental initiatives.

This is in addition to 1,200 trees and shrubs planted in December at MotivAction's headquarters and venue in Ardeley, North Hertfordshire.

The orchard's first fruit trees are expected to yield produce from 2010 onwards and there will also be a two-acre walnut orchard to be planted by mid-March 2008.

As part of the project, the team at MotivAction took part in a communal tree planting session last week, together planting over 50 apple trees.

Ecotree Care, the woodland management company has been employed to manage the orchard project, which is in response to the recent decline in traditional English orchard production over the past 40 years.

Tim Waygood is optimistic about the success of the orchard project: "This is the first step in using the site at MotivAction to bring benefits to the local community and the environment.

"It's important to try to create sustainability and anything that MotivAction can do to achieve this, both on the company site and in the wider world, will be pursued" Following MotivAction's 'going green' initiative, with which the company reduced its carbon impact by 30 per cent in 2007, it is now looking at further plans to become more sustainable as a business.

The GBP14,000 installation of an on site borehole now means the company can pump enough water to create its own supply and reach complete water sustainability.

MotivAction has also offset 430 tonnes of its core operation's carbon impact with Climate Care.

Other future environmental initiatives are also being drawn up: including transportation processes, sustainable energy resources and other farming processes to use the company's site.

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