An innovative idea of 'rounding up' card transactions to fund mass tree planting. It's only 3 months old but has already succeeded in planting one million trees.
In April, as the impact of 'you know what' was becoming increasingly clear, an eco-conscious American bank called Aspiration launched a concept to see if customers would be willing to contribute a small something on each card transaction to fund a mass tree planting.
The results, just 3 months later, are fabulous. Even though some of Aspiration’s customers may be temporarily jobless due to lockdowns, their rounding-up of various purchases funded the planting of 1 million carbon-capturing trees.
The Aspiration debit card comes with a feature called “Plant Your Change” which rounds up every purchase to the nearest dollar, with the extra few cents going to Aspiration’s tree planting operations from North America to Africa.
The idea was based on the widely-publicized theory of climate mitigation. Namely, our planet had experienced significant deforestation since the advent of the industrial age, and that returning some of those billions of acres back into forest would draw a substantial amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere.
“Planting one million trees is a big achievement, but it is just the beginning,” said Andrei Cherny, Aspiration CEO and co-founder. “What we’ve seen during the COVID-19 crisis is that our customers want to do more, not less, to take action to save our planet.”
And, the bank - which is a ‘B Corporation,’ having adopted social good as its top priority - is also paying customers up to 10% cash back for doing business with the most eco-friendly companies.
More good news about tree planting:
Tree Planting Search Engine: Instead of taking the revenue generated by your searches, Ecosia translates its income into planting trees. Millions of them.
Turn Yourself Into a Tree: Canada has just opened the world’s first 'Wood of Life': an area of land devoted exclusively to creating forests of trees grown from the remains of loved ones.
10 Billion Tree-Planting Initiative: Pakistan hires thousands of newly unemployed workers, using this 'nurturing nature' programme to help the planet and come to the economic rescue of thousands of people.