Last year I was approached by Jorden from The Greener Earth Project. He took interest in the eco-friendly printing options I had on offer and was looking to produce some Christmas cards. After chatting and completing various orders, I realised that Jorden’s charity and ethos was something that suited my business very well.

Most importantly I wanted to be part of their mission to plant 1 million trees by the end of 2025.

The Greener Earth Project is a non-profit organization founded in 2020, dedicated to environmental sustainability and conservation efforts. Part of their mission is to bring businesses together like me; allowing members to plant a set number of trees each month depending on their subscription.

I decided that I could plant 5 trees per order, as that worked best for my business. What better way is there to offset a print order by planting trees no matter what size? The money is then donated to community groups and tree planting companies to plant trees around the planet.

Here’s the problem:

Forests cover around 30% of the world’s land area and, according to the think tank, Climate Focus, an area the size of the UK is lost to deforestation each year. When a tree is cut down, the carbon it had been storing is released back into the atmosphere, which leads to increases in the global temperature.

In 2019, Arctic Sea ice was 33% less than the 1981–2019 average minimum, a direct cause of rising global temperatures. And because of deforestation, an estimated 1 million species are threatened with extinction. If deforestation was stopped completely by 2030, it would save as much carbon as taking all the world’s cars off the road.

Here’s what TGEP have achieved so far…

• 63,511 trees planted. That’s 1,382,634 kg of potential CO2e sequestered each year, based on an average 21.77 kg mature tree annually.
• 9 countries. Main areas of planting have been in Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania and the UK.
• £28,808 donations received between January and December 2022.
• 1,063 Instagram followers, 182 Facebook followers and 319 LinkedIn Followers.
• 8,533 hits on the website in 2022.

And here’s their 2022 financials…

Donations

• Memberships & Individual Contributions: £28,828.59
• Business Partnerships: £1,417.20
• Other: £561.90
• Expenditure
• Tree Planting & Operations: £26,922.12
• Marketing & Fundraising: £909.29
• Volunteers: £253.30
• Bank & Financial Charges: £354.68
• TOTAL ASSETS (END OF 2022) £1,204

Their plan:

“Reforestation in Madagascar is important because the destruction of the mangrove estuaries along the coastline has caused mudflats to wash into the ocean, destroying once-productive fisheries and increasing the vulnerability of coastal communities to hurricanes, tsunamis, and floods. In the dry deciduous forests, deforestation threatens one of the world’s rarest and most diverse forest systems. As well as planting trees, the programme helps to provide work to the local community. Our donations also include monitoring of the site after the planting has finished, to ensure it stays healthy and safe.

We also plan to expand our network of business partners, which will allow businesses of all sizes to work with us to help plant trees, allowing us to receive more donations which will help us reach our goal of 1 million trees.

However, we recognise that whilst the majority of businesses do genuinely want to do more for the planet, some might be wanting to plant for the wrong reasons and therefore greenwashing. As such, our team will qualify each business before onboarding to ensure their planting for the right reasons.”

Ambitions for 2023

TO PLANT 200,000 TREES BY THE END OF 2023

As of the end of 2022, we will have planted over 63,000 trees. We want to increase this by over 100% by the end of 2023.

TO GROW OUR COMMUNITY OF BUSINESS PARTNERS

Focusing on businesses, both large and small, we plan to grow our community by offering different partnership options that are tailored to different sizes of business.

TO HAVE ESTABLISHED OUR ORGANISATIONAL APPROACH

Having secured additional Trustees, we want to continue to develop our team by recruiting additional volunteers.

Overall, partnering with The Greener Earth Project allows me to align my business with a meaningful cause and contribute to efforts that make a positive impact on the environment. Here at Joel Sharp Creative, I offer a range of environmentally friendly printing options included seeded paper, business cards and eco-signage. Get in contact today for a free quotation.