Well I say “we”… I mean we didn’t physically plant them, but we funded the planting of them haha. For some time now, we have been donating monthly to tree planting projects via the TreeSisters charity, and they have planted them using funds we provided. As you may know, I trade online via a couple of marketplaces, and customers can come directly to me too. The carbon that is created by delivery of work sold via my Etsy shop is offset by Etsy themselves, which is brilliant. However, we thought a while ago that we could and should do more, and so decided to support Treesisters on a monthly basis. As a company that ships globally, we want to ensure that we give back to planet we call home, offset our emissions and reduce our carbon footprint.
Towards the end of last year we realised that we had planted almost 2000 trees – woohoo! After many months of donating, the total of trees planted was approximately 1978. But then, just as we were approaching the 2k mark, they unfortunately discontinued our tree tally service! Honestly I was a bit upset to have the goalposts moved in such a way, and the lack of transparency they now offer made me feel really uneasy. I want to see a quantifiable result, and to be able to be transparent with my customers, which I cannot do without that data. We did carry on donating for a few more months after that, so although I can’t give you an exact figure, we can safely say that we have planted at least 2000 trees via them and that is something we are really proud of!
However, after this, we had a team meeting and decided it was time to change the carbon offset company that we use. We have done quite a lot of research around this as it really does seem to be a confusing minefield out there, and we are delighted to announce that as of this week we have begun donating to Ecologi. They are an international organisation that plant millions of trees globally, along with providing funding for a variety of climate friendly projects and seem very well respected in their field, working with companies such as BBC and Axa for example. I look forward to continuing our journey with them and planting a lots of lovely trees! And although it hasn’t worked out how we would have liked with Treesisters, we do wish them well with their work. When I started to donate, I couldn’t have imagined that eventually we would have planted 2000 trees! Crikey! That’s a little forest, and one of my proudest achievements.
