A building society is set to plant thousands of trees to off-set the pollution caused by its fleet of company cars.

Yorkshire Building Society, which is based in Bradford, has calculated that its car drivers produced 550 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2001.

Working with Future Forests, an environmental business which helps companies combat climate change, the society will plant 2,500 trees in Sundhope Forest in the Scottish Borders.

The trees will absorb the carbon dioxide and release oxygen into the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis

Mary Blackwell, fleet manager at Yorkshire Building Society, said: "We are very focused on making the society's car fleet more environmentally friendly and so joining with Future Forests was a natural next step.

"As we have many environmental initiatives in place it is likely that the number of trees we plant in future years to offset the emissions caused produced by our company cars will reduce."

Jonathon Shopley, chief executive of Future Forests, commended the society on its commitment to the environment.

"Our aim is to encourage people to take responsibility for some of their contribution to global warming - by reducing their CO2 emissions and then compensating for non-reducible emissions through a whole range of projects, including tree planting," he said.

Yorkshire Building Society encourages its staff to be more environmentally friendly through initiatives such as reducing the level of business travel through video conferencing and greater use of public transport. It is also considering extending the tree planting scheme to enable all staff to personally offset their own carbon dioxide emissions and achieve 'Carbon-Neutral Citizenship'.