Planting Fast-Growing Tree Species to Prevent Additional Disasters Such as Landslides
On April 27, KB Kookmin Card announced that it will support the restoration of forests in areas affected by wildfires by donating 20,000 tree saplings.
The company donated the saplings to help prevent additional disasters such as landslides in North Gyeongsang and South Gyeongsang, where concerns about landslides have increased due to recent wildfires.
The donated saplings are fast-growing species with high carbon absorption and nectar-producing tree species with high honey yield, as designated by the National Institute of Forest Science.
KB Kookmin Card will begin planting the saplings next month and continue through early June. The company also plans to expand the distribution of saplings to help restore endangered species and biodiversity in the future.
As part of its long-term plan to address climate change, KB Kookmin Card collaborated with the forest creation social venture Tree Planet last year to install the 'KB Kookmin Card Joyful Smart Greenhouse' in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province.
The smart greenhouse is equipped with facilities for injecting sterile fresh air and automatically controlling temperature and humidity. It is a dome-shaped air dome facility covering 600 pyeong (approximately 1,983 square meters). The facility is designed to cultivate more than one million forest tissue culture seedlings annually, enabling a rapid response to large-scale disasters such as wildfires.
A KB Kookmin Card representative stated, "We hope this support will help the forests in wildfire-affected areas recover," adding, "We have also established a separate smart greenhouse to ensure a sustainable support system and will continue to support the restoration of forest ecosystems in the future."
As part of its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) social contribution activities, KB Kookmin Card has been collaborating with Tree Planet to produce and donate saplings. Since 2019, the company has donated a total of 11,000 air-purifying plants and cultivated 6,000 endangered plants. It has also planted 6,500 trees in a 32,500-square-meter habitat as part of its efforts to address the climate crisis.
KB Financial Group is currently creating its second nectar forest in Uljin County, North Gyeongsang, an area severely affected by a major wildfire in 2022. After planting 100,000 saplings to establish its first nectar forest in Hongcheon County, Gangwon Province in 2023, the company has been working with the Southern Regional Forest Service and the Forests for Peace Association since last year to create a second 10-hectare nectar forest in the wildfire-affected area of Uljin County, North Gyeongsang.
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