AN ELLAND firm supplying natural wholefoods is showing an appetite for helping the environment.

Suma Foods, based at Lowfields, has agreed to plant more than 5,000 trees a year to compensate for the carbon emissions from its vehicles.

The company is working with Calderdale environmental group Treesponsibility on the project, which also aims to restore woodland destroyed to provide fuel for the district's Victorian mills.

Spokesman Andrew Mackintosh said: "We are a food wholesale and distribution company and as such our fleet of vehicles emits 600 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

"However, we are also a fiercely ethical company and we take our ecological and social responsibilities very seriously.

"By replanting woodland, we will not only cancel out our emissions, we will become carbon positive - that is, we will have made provision to absorb more carbon than we produce."

Suma brand manager Nicola Roebuck said: "We have always striven to lead in ethical business.

"We will continue to look at areas of our business that can be improved and, hopefully, other businesses will see that it is possible to be economically viable, sustainable and ethical."

Trees planted by Suma workers, their families and friends include oak, willow, hazel and yew which were cut down for fuel to power local mills.

Treesponsibility is a not-for-profit community group which has so far planted about 40,000 trees and hedge plants across Calderdale.

Suma's other green measures include using a low-emission Toyota Prius HEV as its company car, sourcing power from Ecotricity - a company supplying power from wind turbines - and recycling everything from light bulbs to packaging.

Suma Foods is a co-operative owned, managed and controlled by its 150 worker members.

It is also the UK's biggest independent wholefood wholesaler with sales of £27m and a range of 6,000 products - including beers, tinned beans, honey, fruit juices, pate, cakes and chocolate.

The business moved to Lowfields in 2001 after 15 years at Dean Clough in Halifax.