Glogster EDU Joins Trees for the Future Effort to Reforest Haiti

REDWOOD CITY, CA, February 01, 2011 (Press-News.org) Glogster EDU, a social media company focused on using social media to improve education methods and reduce the cost of paper, has joined the Trees for the Future's effort to reforest Haiti.

The 22-year-old Trees for the Future focuses on economically challenged areas not just to combat climate change. In Haiti, deforestation has had a direct effect on the spread of cholera, destruction by hurricanes and crop failures. "Almost all of the country's problems--natural disasters, food shortages, poverty--can be traced back to rampant deforestation," says Ethan Budiansky, the Caribbean-programs officer at Trees for the Future. Currently, the organization is concentrating on planting thousands of trees in the mountains around Gonaives.

Glogster EDU supports the work of Save the Trees," said Roman Smola, president and CEO of Glogster, "because it fits so closely with our own efforts to reduce the amount of paper used in American schools."

Glogster EDU is donating funds for the planting of a tree in Haiti for every Glogster EDU Premium subscription sold to or purchased for individual teachers and schools. Glogster's efforts have already passed the 7,000-tree mark and is well on the road to 20,000 trees,
Glogs, online multimedia posters or graphical microblogs from Glogster EDU, can be used to replace paper posters and portfolios with on-line documents that demonstrate a student's understanding of subjects. Classes can work collaboratively within classrooms and throughout entire schools with only electronic files. This reduction in paper use saves trees and slashes expenses while simultaneously empowering educators and students with a digital education platform for their knowledge in the form of text, photos, videos, graphics, sounds, drawings, data attachments and more.

About Glogster EDU
Glogster EDUs committed to providing the best Multimedia Tool & Expression Space for students, educators, and creative people worldwide through its innovative Glog format and new online phenomenon, Glogging. Glogster EDU is a division of Glogster a.s.. For more information about Glogster, visit the website at http:/www.glogster.com/.

Interesting Facts:
The Cost of Paper: It takes one tree to produce 17 reams of low-cost copier paper. A US high school of 1000 students use an average of 7,000 reams of paper per year at a cost of $35,000 yearly and consume 420 trees.
Social Media and the Environment: The growth of internet usage has improved energy conservation overall, but at the same time the large server farms supporting internet traffic has a detrimental effect on the environment because of the energy they consume and the heat they produce. Server farms in the US result in 2000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions every day and represent 3 percent of US electricity consumption and 2 percent of global CO2 emissions. A single Google search can put 1-10 grams of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
What 7,000 Trees Can Do: 7000 trees sequesters 150 tons of CO2 a year