If you’re travelling much, you should take care of your carbon footprint. Flights contribute heavily to carbon dioxide emissions – that’s why I avoid them when travelling within a country. There are several services on the Internet where you can donate money and they use it for climate saving actions. It’s like selling indulgences and you don’t know what your money is used for. I’d like to know that in more detail.
Therefore, I decided to use Treedom – the service of an Italian organization from Firenze, founded in 2010. On this platform, you can choose which tree you want to be planted and give it a name. The fee paid is used to grow the tree from seeds in a tree nursery, educate the farmers planting the tree and to let the farmers care about it until the tree yields fruit. By that time, the farmers use or sell the fruits – it has positive effects over years for the climate and for the farmers.
What do you get if you plant via Treedom? You get some updates about your tree, a picture from the tree at the tree nursery and when it is planted – and you receive the geocoordinates where your tree is standing. Treedom works with farmers in different areas of the world, but most often in Africa and the tropics. You can gift trees to friends or create virtual woods for events. And you can calculate how much carbon dioxid you’re compensating with your trees.
I think that planting trees in this transparent way is a clever idea! You can virtually visit my distributed forest of papaya, coffee, black mangrove, white mangrove, avocado, banana, African cherry, loquat, calliandra, chicozapote, neem, tamarillo, sesbania, tephrosia, guava, java plum, croton, courbaril, grape vine, inga, moringa, orange, mango, tangerine, gliricidia, waterberry, grevillea, black plum, white mulberry, apricot, senna, rosewood, khanyu, lemon, lime, cedar, cacao, cassia, passion fruit, pomegranate, baobab, markhamia, acacia mangium, caoba, tabebuia rosea, ceiba pentandra, hura crepitans, quercus coccifera, longan, pomelo, pinus halepensis, cashew, mandarin, custard apple, leucaena, jacaranda, ravintsara, and macadamia trees – currently at Cameroon, Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Italy, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, Tanzania and Thailand – here: