Fighting Fire With Spare Change

American Forests
Wednesday, 18 December 2002

Beauty Industry to Help Environmental Nonprofit Collect Spare Change to Restore Wildfire Damaged Forests

AMERICAN FORESTS, the nation's oldest nonprofit conservation organization and a world leader in planting trees for environmental restoration and b·cause, a nonprofit organization for salon owners and Beauty Industry Professionals want to plant thousands of trees in wildfire restoration projects across the U.S. following a nationwide collection of change at Coinstar locations. During the month of January, the two organizations will encourage salon owners, beauty industry professionals and their clients to donate change to plant trees.

The year 2002 was the worst wildfire season in recent history, and millions of acres across America are in need of restoration. By November, more than 6.5 million acres of forests were destroyed. With the increase in the size and intensity of last summer's wildfires came a more urgent need to plant trees. AMERICAN FORESTS, who began the Wildfire ReLeaf program in 2000, has planted millions of trees in over 500 restoration projects across the U.S.

Rudy Sprogis, Founder/President of b·cause is calling salon owners and beauty industry professionals to action. During the month-long focus period in January, the foundation will collect spare change and donate the change at Coinstar locations to support AMERICAN FORESTS' Wildfire ReLeaf, a national program designed to re-plant trees in forests destroyed by wildfires. Through a match by partner, the USDA Forest Service, every dollar contributed in change by salon owners and beauty industry professionals will plant two trees.

"b·cause collects spare change for charitable organizations with small budgets and big hearts because that's where small change makes a big difference. Salon owners and Beauty Industry professionals help our clients make major changes—now we can too," says Sprogis.

Through a partnership with the Coinstar company, b·cause has made contributing easy. Salon owners and beauty industry professionals simply take their collected change to any participating Coinstar location nationwide and enter the b·cause identification number 9999. Salon owners and Beauty Industry professionals who donate at Coinstar locations will receive a tax-deductible receipt for their contribution.

b·cause is a 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit organization that was established in 2000 to support charitable organizations that address the social concerns of salon owners and beauty industry professionals. Since its inception, close to two thousand salon owners and beauty industry professionals have collected spare change for the charitable organizations supported by b·cause. To learn more about b·cause and our recipients, call (845) 431-6670.

For more information, or to contact American Forests, see their website at: www.americanforests.org