La Crosse Logan Interact Club plants 98 trees to offset 2 years of school’s paper consumption

Earth Day is right around the corner, and members of Logan High School’s Interact Club recently put together a Tree-Plenish event to try and help offset the school’s paper consumption.

The group’s goal was to sell 90 trees, which will offset almost 1 million sheets of paper. It ended up selling 98 hackberry, crabapple and black cherry saplings, which is just over two years worth of the paper used at the high school. 

Logan Interact paid for the first 50 trees to be planted, and the remaining 48 trees were purchased by community members. 

This is the first time Logan Interact organized a Tree-Plenish event. According to William Coffey, the club’s co-president, they wanted to find a way to get students involved in sustainability. 

“It is important for us to do this Tree-Plenish project to rethink our school’s paper usage, ” Coffey explained. “Every year, we consume about 45 trees worth of paper, which is quite staggering for students to hear.”

Logan Interact decided what types of trees to sell by doing ecological research and meeting with the city’s forestry department to see which trees would be the most beneficial in the community. 

The club worked with Tree-Plenish, which is a nationwide organization run by high school and college students, to create the event.

Tree-Plenish helps oversee individual school events by providing the saplings and helping with marketing. In 2021 Tree-Plenish planted 19,787 trees from events put on by 85 different schools.