FirstBank Plants 50K Trees Across the Southwest

For every Bloom Package opened between Jun. 1 and Aug. 31, FirstBank planted five trees with reforestation nonprofit, One Tree Planted.

FirstBank, one of the nation’s largest privately held banks with a focus on “banking for good,” successfully planted 50,000 native trees for the second consecutive year with the global reforestation organization One Tree Planted.

“We are overjoyed to have finished another impactful year of collaboration with One Tree Planted,” said Joel Johnson, East Valley Market President for FirstBank. “We’re hopeful the additional trees we planted will further improve our environment, creating healthier communities for future generations.”

For each FirstBank Bloom Package opened between Jun. 1 and Aug. 31, FirstBank announced it would plant five trees to help improve air quality, filter and conserve water and support wildlife throughout Arizona, California, and Colorado. Since the partnership’s inception, 100,000 trees have been planted by FirstBank across the three states.

In Arizona, FirstBank’s Bloom Package campaign will benefit the Bear Wallow Wilderness area, which was devastated by the Wallow Fire in 2011. The campaign aimed to reforest approximately 700 acres of burn areas within the fire scar in the Black River watershed, a 114-mile-long river that flows southwest of Alpine in Arizona’s White Mountains.

FirstBank is further supporting the environment by introducing Recycled Ocean Bound Plastic Visa Debit Cards to help reduce ocean waste. The bank has partnered with Second Wave, which uses recycled ocean-bound plastic sourced from the sea to repurpose it as the core of these debit cards.

“Plastic has a negative impact on the health of the world’s oceans. We’re hoping to do our part by introducing the Recycled Ocean Bound Plastic Visa Debit Cards so that our customers can support efforts to clean up our oceans, even from Arizona,” added Johnson.

Introducing Recycled Ocean Bound Plastic Visa Debit Cards is just one of several ways FirstBank is helping the planet. The bank has taken several sustainability measures in the workplace and community.

To find out more about the FirstBank Bloom Package, go to efirstbank.com/green.

About FirstBank FirstBank began providing banking services in 1963. Today, it’s known as an industry leader in digital banking. It has grown to be one of the largest privately held banks in the United States, maintaining more than $28 billion in assets and 100 branch locations across California, Colorado, and Arizona. FirstBank offers a variety of consumer deposit accounts, home equity loans, mortgages, rental property loans, and a full range of commercial banking services, including business financing, commercial real estate loans, treasury management, and more. Since 2000, FirstBank has been recognized as a top corporate philanthropist, contributing nearly $80 million and thousands of volunteer hours to charitable organizations. The company is also unique in that a large portion of its stock is owned by management and employees, giving employees a financial stake in the bank’s success through its Employee Stock Ownership Program. For more information, visit www.efirstbank.com.

About One Tree Planted One Tree Planted is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit on a mission to make it simple for anyone to help the environment by planting trees. Their projects span the globe and are done in partnership with local communities and experts to create an impact on nature, people, and wildlife. Reforestation helps to rebuild forests after fires and floods, provides jobs for social impact, and restores biodiversity. Many projects have overlapping objectives, creating a combination of benefits that contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. To learn more, visit onetreeplanted.org.

Photos courtesy of FirstBank.