From Chad Hunter, Aspiration's Head of Sustainability.
I’m excited to announce a brand-new partnership that will elevate our commitment to planting trees and restoring ecosystems while providing increased transparency and value to our customers. 🙌
Why Trees Matter
At Aspiration, we understand that combating climate change takes a multi-pronged approach. And within that approach, one of the fastest and largest ways to reverse climate change is to restore and reforest ecosystems across the world, per the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading climate science body in the world (Calvin et al., 2023). 📉
That's why we built our popular round-up program, Plant Your Change, which lets you effortlessly create positive environmental change with every purchase. By rounding up your transactions, you directly fund tree planting initiatives that capture carbon, restore ecosystems, and benefit local communities worldwide. 🌳
Customer Feedback
Our Plant Your Change program has been an incredible success - planting over 27 million trees since we launched it! Over that time, you, our customers, have provided incredible feedback on how to improve the way we communicate our tree planting projects and the impact they are having. That is why I’m so excited to announce this partnership today as it will allow us to deliver what you’ve been asking for! 👍
Choosing the Right Partner
Finding a tree-planting partner that aligns with our values and delivers what our customers expect was crucial. We evaluated dozens of organizations and only found a few that met our criteria. Today we are announcing the first organization that we are starting a new partnership with. Ultimately, we needed to partner with an organization that prioritizes:
- High Impact: A focus on data-driven tracking of climate, environmental, and social impact. From tracking tree survival and growth to the overall ecological benefits, we wanted to work with a partner that was responsible for vital reforestation metrics. Additionally, we wanted to ensure that the local communities were engaged and supported during the project lifecycle to help ensure a positive social impact for all those involved in the project 📈
- Transparent and Verified: An ambition to use next-level data and insights to help ensure the trees are planted, reported on over time, and ultimately delivering the high impact across climate, environmental, and social dimensions. This level of transparency and verification is critical to deliver on your expectations 🔍
- Large Scale: The ability to deliver a large-scale program and continue to grow this program as our community of climate-conscious consumers grows 🌲
- Ethical Sourcing: Being, or working with, reputable non-profits with robust due diligence and relationships with local communities. This is key to helping us deliver climate justice by funding and supporting communities across the world that may be adversely affected by climate change 🤝
We've found that and more in our new partner, veritree. Their platform offers exceptional data and traceability, empowering us to showcase the profound impact of the trees you fund.
What to Expect
Thanks to our new partnership with veritree, you'll soon be able to:
- See Where Your Trees Grow: We'll provide updates on the specific planting sites your contributions are supporting and the progress against planting goals. Additionally, you can look at where these sites are located anytime you want to by looking at our new Impact Portal 🌎
- Track Climate & Community Benefits: Learn how your trees fight climate change, restore habitats, and support communities where projects take place. All this data and more are included in the Impact Portal 👏
- Feel Confident in the Process: Feel more confident that trees you fund are verified, monitored, and have a real, positive impact on the climate, environment, and local communities. 🙂
The Power of Change in Your Hands
Every swipe, tap, and round-up with Aspiration is an opportunity to invest in our planet and the people on it. We're honored to work with you and veritree to create a greener, more sustainable future for all. 🙌 🌍
Stay tuned for more updates on the full rollout of these exciting new features! 🚀
Chad Hunter is Aspiration’s Head of Sustainability, with over 13 years in the consumer sustainability, carbon accounting, and renewable energy fields. His passion is to enable and empower individual’s and organizations to take action to help solve climate change.