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Now more than ever, are consumers and businesses demanding sustainable options for goods and services. This has led to a gap in the market for sustainable gifting. More specifically, for sustainable corporate gifting, which proves to be a powerful tool in <a href="https://www.happiworkplaces.in/the-giving-tree-a-case-study-on-eco-friendly-corporate-gifting/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">marketing communications</a>. Since corporate gifting occurs on a much larger scale than personal gifting, businesses are taking the necessary steps to ensure that this reward scheme doesn’t negatively impact their carbon footprint. Individuals are also actively seeking ways in which they can <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-important-choose-ecofriendly-corporate-gifts-chatzimichail/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">live a more sustainable lifestyle</a>, by gravitating towards options that allow them to help reverse climate change.  
Concerns around corporate gifting can vary from whether the product itself is eco-friendly or whether the company is contributing towards the restoration of our planet. Therefore, choosing a gift that not only keeps the climate in mind but is focused on tackling the current climate crisis, will enable you to be certain that your gift hits the brief. 
To respond to this increase in demand, Ecologi has created tree-planting gifts to give customers and employees an opportunity to come together and participate in collective action&#8230;by gifting trees of course!

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We’ve seen success with companies such as Lloyds Bank and Your Coop Broadband, who have used tree-planting gifts as part of campaigns aimed at rewarding staff, as well as for customer acquisition and retention.
<h3>Your Co-op Broadband</h3>
As part of an acquisition campaign, <a href="https://broadband.yourcoop.coop/broadband/ecologi/">Your Co-op Broadband</a> ran a refer a friend campaign which offered new customers a mini woodland of 100 trees to anybody who signed up (I know I would). They also gave a friend of theirs, who referred them, an additional 100 trees (also known as a spinney) to add to their own forest profiles. During their pilot phase, 1/3 of referrals resulted in a successful transaction, and gift cards for over 6,000 trees have been issued so far.
When asked about their gifting experience, Your Co-op Broadband responded by saying that “Word of mouth recommendations have always played a big role in our customer acquisition strategy, but it’s been great working with Ecologi to experiment an alternative to the more traditional ‘self-interest’ bill credit or shopping voucher type incentives. Our customers have also responded really positively, and we’ll definitely be taking this forward.” 
<h3>Lloyds Bank</h3>

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Lloyds Bank had an end of year function in 2021 where they wished to give back to their staff but at the same time encourage them to think differently about climate change. At their end of year event, they gifted a whopping 500 trees (also referred to as a woodland) to each staff member. This gift was then printed on a bookmark and hidden as a surprise in Bill Gates’s ‘How to Avoid a Climate Disaster’ book. 
According to Lloyds, their gifting experience has been &#8220;a great feature which has given our colleagues an opportunity to take the initiative to offset their carbon footprint.&#8221;

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Since 1990, <a href="https://www.fao.org/3/ca8642en/CA8642EN.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1 billion acres of the world&#8217;s forest</a> has been destroyed and we are said to be the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/03/we-are-last-generation-that-can-stop-climate-change-un-summit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">last generation</a> that can help restore the planet. As a result, Ecologi has set themselves a massive goal to reduce half of the world’s emissions by 2040. 
Due to this, Ecologi wishes to engage as many businesses into actively taking part in climate action. Tree-planting gifts are at the heart of exactly that. It offers you an opportunity to introduce climate action to a large group of individuals, in a positive light. 
We know climate change can have negative connotations due to its portrayal in the media. However, presenting it in the form of a gift or reward instantly forms a positive association that focuses more on collective action than what would be referred to as climate anxiety. We’ve seen many people who want to get involved, just don’t know where to start. Tackling the climate crisis alone can feel rather daunting, which is why we focus largely on collective action.

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Tree-planting gifts are affordable, zero waste and climate positive. Each gift includes a printable gift certificate with details on how you can redeem the trees. Recipients can watch the trees grow on their Ecologi profile, where they can continue to expand their own forest. 
<a href="https://ecologi.com/articles/blog/gamification-the-key-to-sustainability-engagement-and-behaviour-change" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gamification</a> ​entails the use of gaming elements to make tree-planting a real-life experience, suddenly it becomes much more than just a click of a button. Not only can recipients see who gifted them the trees, but also the species, age and location of that particular tree. This provides an immersive experience, one that connects recipients to their tree-planting journey. This is why gifting trees can be the perfect option for rewarding employees, gaining new customers or retaining existing ones as it provides them with personalised gifts, just for them. 
Check out our <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/mangrove-planting-in-madagascar" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mangrove tree-planting in Madagascar</a>, <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/forest-restoration-in-kenya" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Afromontane tree-planting in Kenya</a> or agroforestry in <a href="https://trees.org/ourwork" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Eastern Uganda</a>.

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Trees provide us with an abundant amount of benefits. Therefore, planting trees is a necessary step towards restoring the planet. When you gift trees as part of a marketing campaign or as a means to reward your hard working employees, you are essentially creating a chain reaction of positive impact. 
Our amazing community at Ecologi has already achieved some incredible results through collective action like planting as many trees as there are in Central Park each day &#8211; that’s an incredible 23,000 trees we’re talking about! This is why we encourage businesses to get involved with tree-planting gifts, as it&#8217;s an exciting way to spread some positivity and awareness for climate change.
<h3>Real-life examples</h3>
Here are some of the positive impacts our tree-planting projects are having on individuals, communities &amp; local wildlife:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Our tree-planting project in Irregele Milato, Mozambique provides erosion control, helps the soil to retain its nutrients, improves the quality of water and creates employment for local planters and forest guards.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Our site in Changalane will provide income to 30 full-time planters from the local village to plant and grow the seedlings</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Sites in Kenya aim to plant trees that will act as food sources, such as avocado, lemon and papaya trees for the <a href="https://www.edenprojects.org/case-studies/kenya" target="_blank" rel="noopener">large proportion living under the poverty line.</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Our UK tree-planting partner, the Future Forest Company is able to use Biochar and enhanced weathering to remove ten times the amount of carbon from the atmosphere per hectare of land.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A 5-year project with One Tree Planted will help compensate for the <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/wildlife-corridors-koalas-australia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Australian bushfires </a>that led to the loss of vegetation and wildlife, by planting 1 million trees</li>
</ul>

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Gift the planet a better future <a href="https://ecologi.com/gifting" target="_blank" rel="noopener">with Ecologi.</a>

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UK Voluntary Carbon Market Guide: Best Practices for Climate Action

The voluntary carbon market plays an important role in corporate climate strategies – but its effectiveness relies on buyers doing due diligence and rigorous quality assessment on each project, as well as placing the purchase of credits in the right place in the climate journey.
To ensure meaningful climate impact, businesses must develop a comprehensive carbon strategy and find ways to fund only high-quality credits in the voluntary carbon market – and this guide shows you how to do so with Ecologi.

<h2>Table of contents</h2>
<ul>
<li>When to buy carbon credits</li>
<li>Our new carbon projects assessment framework</li>
<li>Ecologi&#8217;s core due diligence principles</li>
<li>How Ecologi scores and ranks carbon credit projects</li>
<li>Questions to ask your carbon credit supplier</li>
<li>Take action in the voluntary carbon market</li>
</ul>

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<h2>When should businesses buy carbon credits in the voluntary market?</h2>
Businesses must not use credits in place of making direct, measurable reductions in their emissions. Instead, follow these steps to ensure you buy your carbon credits on the right step of your corporate climate action journey, and in the right way:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Measure your emissions first – to allow you to understand where your business’s emissions are coming from. 
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Set science-based targets and work towards them – set ambitious targets aligned with the SBTi and compatible with the global 1.5ºC warming target.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Beyond value chain mitigation (BVCM) – design your BVCM portfolio to work alongside your decarbonisation plan and address your unabated emissions in each reporting year. Align it with SBTi guidance and the Oxford Principles. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Buy high-quality carbon credits – use this guide to ensure the carbon credits you buy meet rigorous quality standards. Remember, under the SBTi framework you’ll also need permanent carbon removal credits for neutralising your residual emissions when you reach your net-zero date.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Disclose and report transparently – publicly disclose information about your carbon credit purchases, and clearly communicate the limited role of carbon credits in your broader sustainability strategy.</li>
</ol>

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<h2>Ecologi&#8217;s carbon project assessment framework</h2>
In April 2025, we published a report summarising how we assess carbon credit projects against our rigorous proprietary rubric. A snapshot of what goes into our carbon credit project assessment is below, or you <a href="https://cms-assets.offset.earth/app/uploads/20250428124112/Ecologi_Whitepaper_A4.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">download the full whitepaper here</a>.

<h2>Carbon project due diligence: Ecologi’s core principles</h2>
At Ecologi, we maintain general due diligence principles which we apply universally across the voluntary carbon market, to support our efforts to supply only high-quality carbon credits.
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">ICROA-endorsed standards only – we supply credits exclusively from carbon standards which are ICROA-endorsed.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Responsive to ICVCM decisions – we support the ICVCM’s two-tick approach to providing CCP-Approval to project methodologies, and we go further still, to assess individual projects on their merits and limitations as well.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Keep the carbon credit life cycle as short as possible – 75% of our credits in 2024 came directly from project developers and their nominated dispensaries (as opposed to intermediaries on the secondary market), maximising the proportion of purchase price which goes to the developer.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Locally-appropriate projects only – we take care to ensure that supported projects are being applied in appropriate geographies, where they can have the greatest impact.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Deep project-level scrutiny – our extensive assessment criteria are specific to each type of project, and we assess every project against these criteria, ensuring the project’s specifics have been taken into account.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Methodological consensus – we synthesise data we receive from our partners Sylvera, BeZero Carbon, Calyx Global and Renoster) with our own in-house analysis to uncover where there is consensus about project quality, and improve confidence.</li>
</ul>

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<h2>How to evaluate carbon credits: Ecologi&#8217;s scoring methodology</h2>
We designed a three-layer assessment process which takes into account the merits and limitations of the carbon standard used, the carbon credit methodology used, and of the individual project design.
The tables below summarise some of the data inputs we use at each stage.

<h3>Assessment level: Carbon Standard</h3>
Examples: Gold Standard, Verra, Puro Earth, Isometric, Plan Vivo.

<h3>Assessment level: Methodology (or ‘Protocol’)</h3>
Examples: GS TPDDTEC, VM0048, ACM0002.

<h3>Assessment level: Project</h3>
Examples: GS 10790, VCS 1571.

Criteria in the assessment are categorised as either quality criteria or risk criteria, and are segmented by our three pillars of impact: Climate, Nature and People. Based on how it meets each criterion, the project gains points for quality criteria, and loses points for excess risk – ultimately giving a risk-adjusted value out of 100 for each of these pillars.
Having gathered our risk-adjusted pillar scores, we use our own unique scoring formula which weights the risk-adjusted Climate score of the project equally with the combined risk-adjusted Nature and People scores. The formula then produces an ‘overall’ score (also out of 100) for the project. In order to be supplied by Ecologi, projects must meet a minimum overall score of 80, and must achieve no lower than 65 in any given risk-adjusted pillar score.

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<h2>Key questions to ask carbon credit suppliers</h2>
Selecting the right carbon credit provider is important to help guide you to make informed choices as part of your corporate sustainability strategy. Before purchasing carbon credits, businesses should ask:
<h3>Project quality </h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you assess/validate/underwrite project quality? If so, how?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do your projects get good ratings from the ratings agencies? If so, what ratings are they?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you source credits directly from project developers, or from the secondary market?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you monitor projects over time to ensure continued success, and how do you remedy it, if a project&#8217;s quality drops?</li>
</ul>
<h3>Due diligence</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you ensure you are supporting the right projects in the right locations?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you account for project permanence and mitigate risks?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">What makes your projects additional?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you assess the project&#8217;s impacts on climate, nature and people?</li>
</ul>
<h3>Positioning</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you contribute to the development of a high integrity voluntary carbon market?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you align your portfolios with the Oxford Principles? If so, how?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you reflect ICVCM guidance on carbon credit methodologies and technologies?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you build multi-year portfolios that align to mid- &amp; long-term SBTs?</li>
</ul>
As the voluntary carbon market evolves, corporate buyers have the power and the responsibility to demand high-impact credits to drive real climate progress. This means buyers have a responsibility to do due diligence before placing an order for carbon credits.

<h2>Take action in the voluntary carbon market</h2>
As a business committed to corporate climate action, understanding the voluntary carbon market is essential for making informed decisions about carbon credits. Our comprehensive whitepaper provides deeper insights into creating an effective sustainability strategy.
<a href="https://cms-assets.offset.earth/app/uploads/20250428124112/Ecologi_Whitepaper_A4.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download our full whitepaper</a> to learn how your business can navigate the voluntary carbon market with confidence.

<h2>Connect with one of our climate experts</h2>
Please complete our form to arrange a 30-minute discovery call to discuss your goals and get a tailored solution for your business.

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It’s not all bad. While there’s a lot of negative news about the climate, let’s not forget the good stuff. Find climate wins, reasons to be hopeful and plenty of positivity in our good news timeline.

Corporate gifting: what are tree-planting gifts?

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