Philadelphia Insurance Cos. Employees Plant Trees in Wildfire-Devastated Texas Park

Fifty Philadelphia Insurance Companies (PHLY) employees are supporting the company’s efforts to plant 80,000 trees for the third consecutive year through a two-day project near Austin, Texas.

Employees have finished their second day of planting in Bastrop State Park as part of the PHLY 80K Trees initiative, resulting in 3,500 trees in the ground.

PHLY’s 80K tree planting mission began in 2015 in partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation and was renewed in 2016 and 2017. The goal to fund the planting of 80,000 trees was reached each year with the help of PHLY’s independent agents, brokers, and policyholders who signed up for paperless statements.

The company has used the cost savings from each year’s new paperless enrollees to fund plantings the following year.

PHLY employees returned to Bastrop this year, where the Arbor Day Foundation recommended planting an additional 40,000 trees. A 2011 wildfire in the Bastrop State Park destroyed close to 1,700 homes, killed two people, and inflicted an estimated $325 million of insured property damage.

The Arbor Day Foundation will lead projects to plant an additional 40,000 trees in other U.S. forests this year to complete the 80,000 trees PHLY funded in 2017.

Source: Philadelphia Insurance Companies