The Screen Actors Guild Awards is expanding efforts to further reduce its carbon footprint thanks to a unique reforestation partnership with Patagonia Sur, patagoniasur.com.

Though Hollywood and Patagonia are thousands of miles apart, these two unique regions are being linked in an exclusive effort to battle climate change.  In 2012, on behalf of the SAG Awards, Patagonia Sur planted a grove of 45 native-species trees on degraded lands in Patagonia, Chile, to help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby helping to fight the threat posed by climate change.

For the 2013 SAG Awards, Patagonia Sur is planting 3,400 trees — two for each of the 1,700 guests at the Post SAG Awards Gala hosted by People magazine and the Entertainment Industry Foundation. In their gala gift bags, guests will find a code enabling them to log on patagoniasuroffsets.com/SagAwardsForest/ where they will be able to affix their names to the trees being planted in their honor within a part of Patagonia, now called the SAG Awards Forest. Viewers inspired by these efforts can also evaluate their personal carbon footprint by going to the same website.

This year’s expanded partnership with Patagonia Sur continues the SAG Awards’ commitment to green practices. In October 2012, for the fourth consecutive year, the SAG Awards was honored with the Environmental Media Association’s Green Seal, recognizing the production’s outstanding efforts to implement sustainable initiatives and promote environmental awareness, while creating a nearly zero waste event.

From | www.sagawards.org