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If you’ve been following Ecologi for a while, you’ll know that we’re incredibly proud of the immense tree planting power of our community. At the time of writing, our community is planting a million trees approximately every 10 days. We thought we’d formalise our commitment to responsible reforestation by joining up with dozens of other pledgers at 1t.org, and commit to planting 1.7 billion trees by 2030.
We’ve joined a host of corporations, governments and NGOs in making a pledge to the <a href="https://us.1t.org/about-us/">1t.org US Chapter</a>, which is led by the World Economic Forum and American Forests. 1t.org aims to connect, empower, and mobilise a global reforestation community to conserve, restore, and grow one trillion trees globally by 2030.
Our 1t.org pledge of 1.7 billion trees planted by 2030 reflects Ecologi’s ambition to help restore nature and halt and reverse climate change. Between 2020-2030, we’ll be working tirelessly to convert the small contributions of individuals within our community into a <a href="https://ecologi.com/collective-action">huge collective impact</a>.
<a href="https://us.1t.org/pledge/ecologi-members-planting-over-24-billion-trees-by-2030/">Read our full 1t.org pledge here</a>

Our 1.7 billion tree pledge is with the <a href="https://us.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">US Chapter of 1t.org</a>.
The US Chapter was created in August 2020, shortly after the Forum launched its initiative to support the <a href="https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration</a> by conserving, restoring and growing 1 trillion trees globally by 2030.
Whilst the 1.7 billion trees making up our pledge will be planted all over the world, it will also include a projected 500,000 trees planted in the USA, through our local tree add-ons funded by our US subscribers.
<a href="https://us.1t.org/view-pledges/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Browse the other pledging organisations</a>

At the time of making our 1t.org pledge (early 2021), our community was funding the planting of 1 million trees approximately every 10 days.
Over the coming years, we’re scaling up our platform and expanding our community to fund the planting of over 1.7 billion trees by 2030.
As part of our commitment we will review our 1.7 billion trees pledge annually, to measure it against our community growth trajectory at the time. It is our intention to continually revise our pledge upwards as our community grows, each year to 2030.

Based on our mission to halt and reverse climate change, we crunched the numbers based on our early community growth and the tree-planting power we have.
Our subscription model means that our community’s <a href="https://ecologi.com/">tree planting</a> power grows exponentially – it took us over 9 months to plant our first million trees, but we are now planting a million trees approximately every 10 days. Working with 1t.org, we made a forecast based on our current community growth trajectory to produce the estimated 1.7 billion trees figure. However, we’re confident that we will well exceed this, and one projection we ran actually predicts our community will have planted up to 24 billion trees before 2030!
Alongside reforestation and afforestation work, Ecologi also purchases verified carbon credits to offset our members’ carbon footprints. Regularly prioritising forestry-related offsets such as REDD+, we aim to help conserve thousands of hectares of old growth forests in locations such as the Amazon region and South Asia – in addition to planting billions of new trees around the world.
We have not counted these forestry offset projects towards our pledge – our commitment to 1.7 billion trees by 2030 only includes our tree planting activities.

Using data from the 1t.org <a href="https://us.1t.org/carbon-estimator/">Carbon Estimator</a>, our 1.7 billion trees will remove approximately 314,233,899 tCO2e from the atmosphere over a 30-year lifetime. This is equivalent to removing the annual emissions from 68 million cars.
Of course, this runs parallel to our carbon offsetting activities, which are currently producing carbon reductions of 75,000 tCO2e per month.
Please note that we do not count our tree planting activities towards our carbon offsetting activities, and we do not include estimates of carbon removed by our trees in our formal calculations of emissions reductions or removals. All of our carbon offsetting activity is <a href="https://ecologi.com/faqs">carried out using verified tCO2</a>.
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We monitor all of the projects we support (across both reforestation and carbon offsets) closely to ensure that they meet the highest standards in their relative spheres. This includes following general principles such as <a href="https://ecologi.com/articles/in-depth/responsible-reforestation-faqs">planting ecologically appropriate trees in the planting sites</a>, and avoiding monocultures, but also more specific rules we set ourselves, such as that the projects must support multiple additional <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals">Sustainable Development Goals</a>.
We work with specific tree-planting partners on the basis that they provide opportunities and stable employment to local people on the planting sites – not just planters – and that the trees are planted and monitored effectively. They must also report routinely to us with updates from each project site, relating key information such as tree species, survival rates, and number of livelihoods supported. Partners do not receive funding from us for projects that do not meet these rigorous requirements.
At Ecologi, we intend and project that we will reach our pledge target through only our tree-planting activities, but the funding we will provide over this period towards forestry-related carbon offset projects such as REDD+ are likely to conserve a similar or greater number of trees as well. In order to receive our community funding, these projects also must meet rigorous standards including certification by one of the most reputable carbon standards such as <a href="https://www.goldstandard.org/">Gold Standard</a> or <a href="https://verra.org/">Verified Carbon Standard</a>, as well as maintaining multiple verified SDG co-benefits.
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<a href="https://ecologi.com">Sign up to Ecologi today</a> to help us reach our goal!

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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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