Businesses are being given the opportunity to reduce their impact on the environment by helping to create new woodlands in Yorkshire.

The Clapham-based Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust (YDMT) and Skipton compliance company Comply Direct have joined forces to help individuals and businesses that care about the environment and want to reduce their carbon footprint, to invest in local woodland creation.

To celebrate their new partnership, the two organisations planted trees on the Bolton Abbey Estate.

YDMT Director David Sharrod said: “We know that many businesses want to reduce their impact on the environment and planting trees is one of the very best things you can do.

“Working with Comply Direct we aim to give businesses the opportunity to invest in accredited woodland creation projects that are right on their doorstep. The new woodlands will not only help mitigate carbon emissions they will also benefit the landscape and wildlife of this area and people everywhere who enjoy visiting them.”

Gareth Roberts, managing director of carbon-neutral Comply Direct, said: “Our aim is to help our customer base calculate their own environmental footprints, make reductions and potentially also become carbon neutral themselves via locally produced offsets. Such a process is not only good for the environment but great for the bottom line of a company.”

The new initiative – which will be launched early next year – will help businesses to understand and take measures to reduce their carbon footprint and help them become carbon neutral by investing in the planting of new native woodlands.

Geoff Garret, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s senior trees and woodland officer, said: “The authority has been working closely with the YDMT for the last 15 years to create new areas of woodland – they play a vital role in maintaining this important, protected landscape and the wildlife within it.

“We are very pleased that the need to increase the area of woodland in the national park has been recognised by a local company and we hope many more will follow its example.”