A pilot project in 2013, the Street Tree Project developed into a five-year partnership with the city of Hamilton’s street tree programme so the project could target communities with higher than average poor air quality in a door to door campaign to sign people up for a free street tree.

OPIRG hired a student to coordinate the door to door campaign each year. Thanks to the work of McMaster students Jonathon Valencia (2013), Krista Kruja (2014), Harshal Patel (2015), Hannah Walters-Vida (2016) and Chelsea Lowes (2017) we garnered 278 Street Tree requests from residents in the lower city with a four year average of 82% of the requests planted!

Beyond the partnership with the City of Hamilton Forestry department, the Street Tree Project also created valuable connections with:

• Environment Hamilton where we joined the Air and Tree Taskforce made up of community groups like the Hamilton Naturalist Club as well as City of Hamilton staff from Forestry and Climate Change departments et al
• McMaster’s Research Shop conducted research for us on best-practices with door-to-door campaigning
• City Councillors in wards three and four (Councillors Bernie Morelli, Matthew Green and Sam Merulla)
• Neighbourhood hubs in Keith and Crown Point, et al
• And the volunteers and people in the neighbourhoods who helped create a greener and cleaner airshed

Read all about it on the Hamilton Street Tree blog!