No! The trees you’re funding right now are years away from doing their thing.

Every Ecologi subscription is used for two purposes: to offset your carbon footprint through verified carbon offsets, and – separately – to plant trees.

The carbon offset projects you fund to offset your footprint rotate each month between top-quality projects that avoid greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere (such as renewable energy projects which displace existing fossil fuel energy). We only fund offset projects which meet the highest verification standards, such as Gold Standard or Verified Carbon Standard. In addition, we aim to fund offset projects which meet other important sustainability and development standards like CCBS and SDVista.

Until they are several years old, your baby trees are not mature enough to sequester carbon in large quantities – and those verification programmes which do exist often will not verify carbon removal from trees until they are around 10 years old. That’s why we do not count your trees as contributing towards offsetting your footprint – and only offset using verified carbon credits. Of course – your trees are still out there, quietly sucking up carbon all the same! To find out how to make your business or product carbon neutral using carbon offsets, take a look at our carbon neutral guide.

The difference between a well managed reforestation project, and one that isn’t, is huge. It’s imperative that your funds go to a project that meets the exceptionally high criteria needed for mass tree planting as a tool for combating climate change.

For answers to lots of common questions such as “how do you protect the trees?” take a look at our article on responsible reforestation.

We publish certificates each month of how many tonnes of CO2 (‘carbon credits’) have been prevented from going into the atmosphere or removed from it. View these here. The standards of these projects are certified at the highest level by Gold Standard.

In terms of trees planted, you can view the associated invoice receipts of purchases from our tree planting partner, Eden Projects.

But who is checking our partners are actually planting trees? Our partners are regularly audited by third parties, check out this annual audit for our Madagascan tree planting project. Read more on quantifying tree impact here.