Press Release

SMART returns to Mt. Banahaw to plant more trees

[September 30, 2008/ Manila] - Employee-volunteers of leading wireless services provider Smart Communications Inc. (SMART) returned recently to Mt. Banahaw to plant more trees, as part of the company’s efforts to contribute to the preservation of the mystic mountain.

A total of 3,000 seedlings of fruit-bearing trees like lanzones and kapeng barako, and endemic trees like kamagong and narra were planted by employee-volunteers together with the local community in Barangay Concepcion Banahaw in Sariaya, Quezon. Mt. Banahaw is the largest watershed area in Southern Tagalog, benefiting about 1.2 million people from the provinces of Quezon and Laguna.

The Banahaw tree planting initiative is part of the PLDT Group’s three-year tree planting program together with Japan’s leading mobile communications company NTT DoCoMo. Under the program, SMART is initially targeting to plant a total of 150,000 seedlings in various sites across the country by the end of the year.

Tree planting activities have since commenced in Bulacan, Cebu, Iloilo, Negros Occidental and Oriental, Sarangani Province, Davao, and Tawi-Tawi.

In 2005, SMART had a tree planting activity in Mt. Banahaw in response to the call of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to plant more trees in the countryside through the Trees for Life Campaign. Employee-volunteers went back to Mt. Banahaw in August 2007 and planted a total of 5,000 more seedlings. PLDT’s and SMART’s reforestation efforts have already contributed over 130,000 seedlings in various parts of the country since 2004.