I’M delighted that the Middlesbrough mayor, Andy Preston, is planting 10,000 trees in his town, (Echo, Dec 31) and I am pleased that he doesn’t claim they’ll save the planet – rather he wants them for aesthetic and recreational purposes.

I say this because I recently learnt that if we relied on trees alone, we’d need to plant 500,000 to achieve carbon neutrality for Redcar & Cleveland council. And, to get the same result for the borough as a whole, we’d need to plant nine million.

Since Redcar & Cleveland has roughly the same population as Middlesbrough, I guess the latter would need a similar amount of tree planting to obtain the same results.

Of course, a significant advantage Redcar & Cleveland has over Middlesbrough is that we have more countryside on which to plant the much-needed forests.

Can we cash in by growing a few million trees on Middlesbrough’s behalf?

Steve Kay, Cabinet Member, Health, Housing and Welfare, Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council.