SIBUR’s volunteers planted more than 6,000 Siberian pine trees in the vicinity of Tomsk

17 october 2022

A sapling planting campaign took place in Tomsk on October 15 as part of the Forest Formula project implemented under SIBUR's Formula for Good Deeds social investment program. The event was held with the support of Tomsk Oblast’s Forestry Department and Tomskleskhoz.».

More than 180 SIBUR’s employees and members of their families as well as the company's partners took part in the campaign. Thanks to the volunteers' hard work, about 2.5 hectares of forest lands in the vicinity of Tomsk were reforested with the participants planting more than 6,000 Siberian pine saplings.

We have been holding sapling planting campaign in Tomsk since 2021 with the participation of SIBUR’s volunteers, their families, and our partners. It is very gratifying to see that the employees of Tomskneftekhim actively support the company's initiative by bringing their children to these events. There are a lot of people willing to contribute to the cause of reforestation. This is not fortuitous as sapling planting is an opportunity to take care of the environment, to do a kind and useful thing with one's own hands, Vladimir Pleshkov, general director of Tomskneftekhim, noted.

Taking care of the environment is one of the priorities of SIBUR's Sustainable Development Strategy, with the company planning to plant at least 5 million trees by 2025.

The geography of our sapling planting campaigns conducted within the framework of the Formula for Good Deeds is steadily expanding. This year we held five campaigns in Tomsk, Tobolsk and Krasnoyarsk, planting a total of more than 30,000 saplings and rehabilitating some 8 hectares of forest. It has already become a good tradition for SIBUR employees to take part in environmental campaigns in spring and autumn, and a whole community of eco-activists has sprung up within the company, Elena Snezhko, manager and head of the Formula for Good Deeds social investment program, noted.

Before the campaign kicked off, employees of Tomskleskhoz gave the volunteers a master class explaining how to properly handle the Sword of Kolesov (a special tool for planting seedlings) to avoid damaging the root system of the saplings.

Forests are our lungs. That is why regenerating forests is an important mission for mankind. I am always happy to contribute to such good causes, because the forests of Siberia are our common heritage. That is why whenever such massive tree-planting campaigns are organized, we always try to take part and make sure we do not have other things planned for that time frame, Liliya Daricheva, the leader of SIBUR’s volunteering movement in Tomsk, and a participant of the campaign, commented.

It is important for every conscientious individual to take good care of nature, so I felt compelled to take part in this campaign. Today we were fortunate with the weather, and very much enjoyed working outdoors. We help the nature recover and in return we build up our own strength that nature gives back to man, Oleg Kondratyev, an expert with the Engineering Center at NIOST, and a participant of the campaign, emphasized.

This is the first time I've taken part in a campaign like this, and I came here together with my parents. What is inspiring is that there are so many of us here and we are all eager to help our forests. I will definitely participate in further campaigns, Alexander Krasnikov, a young campaign participant, concluded.

What made this campaign particularly special was the fact that it was attended by teachers and students of Tomsk’s Children's Quantorium Technopark who planted more than 1,000 saplings of Siberian pine that they had grown all by themselves.

At our technopark, we have what we call the Bioquantum, a special club where students study biology and genetics. Last year, our students took part in SIBUR's first Tomsk Forest campaign, became inspired and decided to test the technology of planting seeds at our Quantorium's special site together with Tomsk Institute of Agriculture and Tomsk Polytechnic University. We applied for a Formula for Good Deeds grant, and it ended up being supported by SIBUR. Our young students had been experimenting for a year, and although not everything was working out initially, we managed to go through the entire process of cultivating seedlings, and today we are actually planting the fruits of these experiments. We will continue monitoring the survival rate of our Siberian pine trees, Polina Mozgaleva, director of the Quantorium children's technology park in Tomsk, said.