In my Ecologi update series, I provide an update on the impact of Financial Expert’s donations to Ecologi – a company helping to fight climate change. In May we have hit another exciting milestone which we will outline below. Together, we are helping to fight against the climate emergency.
Who is Ecologi?
Ecologi is the climate change platform we have partnered with to become carbon negative. You can visit my full Ecologi review for more details.
Ecologi distributes funds raised to accredited carbon-offset schemes across the world, to ensure that our donations create as much impact as possible.
Through Ecologi, you can become carbon negative for just £4.70 per month. Joining through my referral link, you will receive some bonus trees of (additional impact) against your account.
Tree Update #6 – May 2021
Current subscription level: Helper (1 Carbon footprint) Booster (2 Carbon footprints)
Number of trees planted: We have funded 1,728 2,000 trees in total
Number of bonus trees from referrals: We’ve been awarded 720 720 bonus trees
Additional impact purchased: 184 260 trees were funded by Financial-Expert.co.uk advertising income this month
For the previous month’s update, see our April 2021 update.
May 2021 at a glance
Through the monthly subscription, referral trees and additional donations, we funded a total of 272 trees in May.
The website received 19,000 visitors during the same period. So this equates to one tree for every 69 visitors! Considering that Financial-Expert.co.uk is a free site to use, we continue to be proud of this impact.
To put that into context; if larger websites such as Twitter or Facebook planted a tree for every 46 visitors, they would have planted over 100 million trees each by now.
A meaningful upgrade – we’ve increased our plan level
It’s been on our list for some time, but in May 2021 we finally upgraded the subscription level of our plan.
As well as contributing more trees per month through an automated direct debit, subscription plans also include carbon offsetting projects which help to remove CO2 from the atmosphere this year, rather than needing to wait for trees to mature.
Over the longer term, we have an ambition to increase the plan level to ‘Mega’, which will offset the carbon of 4 individuals each and every month.
Remember, most of our tree planting efforts are funded through additional contributions to Ecologi which are recorded and visible on our profile page. But by increasing the minimum contribution each month, and introduction more carbon-offset projects into the mix, we hope we will increase the positive impact our arrangement with Ecologi will bring.
The path to 10,000 trees
April has been a steady month for our tree planting efforts. We now have a reliable path to victory by 31/12/22 and understand what we need to do to get there.
10,000 trees over 24 months equates to 416 trees per month. Therefore to keep up the required carbon-offset pace, we simply need to buy enough trees to top-up any bonus trees from referrals up to that 416 level.
At 2,000 trees, we are 20% of the way towards our target and month 5 is also 20% through the 24 month timeline.
Our purchased impact
So how many of these trees came from direct donations from Financial-Expert.co.uk? Well, in April we donated enough to add 260 trees using May advertising income.
For complete transparency and accountability, this donation is clearly labelled as ‘Financial-Expert.co.uk Apr-21’ so you can see them for yourself on the Ecologi website.
Recipients of May financial contributions
Ecologi picks two projects to fund each month. By being selective, and focusing donations to as few partners as possible, it can keep administrative costs to a minimum for all parties involved.
Efficiency is always an important aspect of charity for me. We want to know that my money is going as far as it can. Let’s take a look at the projects Ecologi selected this month:
- Peatland restoration and conservation in Indonesia
- Converting landfill gas to energy in Northern Turkey
As any book about land and forestry will explain; the cost of tree planting will be directly linked to land values and the local cost of labour. That’s why many of Ecologi’s chosen projects are in emerging market economies or less economically developed countries.
If labour costs are lower, then the same budget will plant many more trees. The cost of planting a tree in the UK can be more than 5 times more expensive than a project in an emerging or frontier economy.
Planting trees is a team sport!
Help us by joining Ecologi today through my referral link. You will earn some bonus trees, and Financial Expert will earn a financial incentive which will be spent directly on the Ecologi platform to fund further trees. Almost as fun as getting free shares, right?
Alternatively, if you want to make a one-off contribution of trees or carbon offset to our virtual forest and directly help us hit our goal that way, then you can do so through the same link above.