<font color=orange>Innovation Awards:</font> Saving the World One Tree at a Time

(Customer Service Category Winner)

The Tree Benefits Calculator (www.itreetools.org/treecalculator) is based on more than 20 years of peer-reviewed research. It calculates the environmental and economic benefits of individual tree species, says Greg Ina, general manager at the Davey Tree Expert Co.’s Davey Institute in Kent, Ohio.

Davey Tree helped create the calculator with the Casey Tree Foundation, a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C. But the research that made the calculator possible resulted from a formal partnership between Davey, USDA Forest Service, National Arbor Day Foundation, Society of Municipal Arborists and the International Society of Arboriculture.

 A particular tree’s structural information (e.g., species, diameter and canopy) yields clues about ecological benefits such as improved air quality, lower energy use (for adjacent homes and businesses) and reduction in storm water runoff. Homeowners can use that information to choose trees that provide the maximum ecological benefits.

Type in “Maple” and “24 inches” in diameter, for example, and a homeowner will learn the tree provides benefits of $239 per year through increased property value ($124), storm-water runoff reduction ($79), reduced electric bills ($15) and other cost savings.

For now, the calculator is limited to trees in the Washington, D.C. area, but plans are underway to make it available on a nationwide basis in 2009. That will allow Davey Tree to strengthen its customer service and consumer education. “i-Tree allows anyone to understand that while trees cost money to maintain, they return that investment many times over by making our homes cooler and communities cleaner,” explains Ina. “We see it as an opportunity to promote strategic tree planting and help customers understand healthy trees provide more benefits.”