In a bid to combat hazardous carbon emissions by vehicles, young environmentalists have embarked on an initiative to plant and maintain trees on road reserves along Thika Road superhighway as an effort to mitigate climate change.
The environmentalists led by Anthony Muruthi, a lecturer at the Nairobi National Polytechnic, noted that thousands of vehicles that ply the Thika Superhighway pollute the environment from fossil-fuel combustion which is harmful and may cause diseases, and leave an extensive carbon footprint.
Speaking during the tree planting exercise, Muruthi said that their greening initiative is not only important for cleaning the atmosphere but also providing good shade for numerous people making stopovers while travelling along the highway, urging Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) to allow them to establish simple washrooms for motorist and pedestrians.
He pointed out that there is a need to plant trees along highways and in the streets of towns and cities like Nairobi so as to provide fresh air by reducing carbon gases in the environment.
Muruthi however urged young people to embrace such initiatives of planting trees which could provide green job opportunities instead of indulging in social vices such as alcohol and drug abuse.
Some of the environmentalists and students from the Nairobi National Polytechnic who participated in the exercise, led by Sheringham Orodo and Humphrey Karani, said that they will continue planting trees as a way of supporting President Ruto’s agenda of planting 15 billion trees by 2032, urging the government to provide them with any available resources to enable them to achieve their agenda.
The young environmentalists under the President’s Award program have been undertaking different projects in different counties with the aim of giving useful service to their communities.
By
Antony Kioko
