Trees as a New Currency - Belgium

Through the combination of ecology and technology, Trees as a New Currency has developed a TreeApp for brands to “distribute” trees via email or with a QR code. Customers using the TreeApp are given the opportunity to choose the planting site and the trees can be shared on social media.

Fast facts:

This activity has planted over 8 million trees in 10 different tropical countries to date;
More than 425,000 tonnes of CO2 will be sequestered over the next decades with trees already planted.

The problem

Deforestation is a global issue. A lack of awareness about how trees benefit humans and the planet needs to be addressed.

The solution

This activity has developed a technology that transforms traditional corporate social responsibility into impact marketing, where the positive corporate actions and impact on soil restoration, the water cycle, clean air, carbon emissions reduction and stakeholder empowerment can be made visible through a new currency: trees. The activity embeds trees in a company’s business model and distributes them individually to engage stakeholders using a mobile app called TreeApp. Corporate social responsibility actions can now be made visible to all and become huge motivators for other companies and corporations. Once the trees have been distributed via e-mail or using a QR code, consumers can post their trees on social media, promoting tree planting and also the company that distributed that tree.

Helping the planet

Trees absorb carbon and help communities build resilience to climate change. Forests cool the planet by generating moisture and bacteria that actually seed clouds. Forests make clouds by releasing water vapour and microscopic nuclei in the atmosphere, which through a high albedo effect, reflect the incident solar radiation back into space. Research suggests that adding 20 million square kilometers of forest could create an additional two percent of cloud coverage over the entire planet.

Helping people

The direct beneficiaries of the TreeApp are the local populations that actually plant the trees. This activity has seen that forests are better protected if local communities get more benefits from standing forests rather than felled trees. Engaging and training local farmers is key and women start most planting sites in local communities. In India, for example, it was women who started the local planting nursery and in Burkina Faso they have been collecting the seeds as an additional income.

Scaling Up

This activity can be scaled to all brands and companies to engage customers and to organizations to engage employees.