Water Bottles Help Joplin

Imagine Wildwood without trees.

That's the grim reality of residents of Joplin, MO, who face a landscape in desperate need of new trees after the May 22 tornado downed or disfigured the majority of trees during 200 miles per hour wind. Wildwood city staffers want to help repopulate trees there by selling customized water bottles.

Wildwood-logoed bottles (as shown in the photo accompanying this article) are $5. Gary Crews, superintendent of parks and recreation, said all proceeds go to Joplin for tree replacement through a St. Louis-based company, Forest ReLeaf of Missouri.

The water bottles were sold at a few of Wildwood's recent city events; they will be available at the Oct. 7 Concert on the Plaza in Wildwood Town Center.

Another event at which they will be available is the Patch Pet Party on Oct. 31, which is a first-ever Halloween event hosted by Eureka-Wildwood Patch, the , , , and .

Forest ReLeaf was founded in 1993 and has distributed more than 80,000 trees for planting by community groups and agencies. Much of the group's work is executed through volunteers.