We plant trees to re-wild, restore & improve biodiversity
Companies can donate to mitigate their unavoidable carbon
People can help alleviate their toll on the environment
We plant trees to re-wild, restore & improve biodiversity
Companies can donate to mitigate their unavoidable carbon
People can help alleviate their toll on the environment
The Committee on Climate Change reported that the UK needs to plant 1.5 billion more trees to become carbon neutral. Our affordable planting plans are geared towards companies/people planting more than their share. For example if every private company in the UK planted trees with us then we would plant over 6 billion trees!
We plant trees in the UK and around the world.
We plant & care for our own trees in the UK for just £4.50 per tree, we can offer this low price because we work with conscientious land owners who would like to have trees planted on their land to help the environment, we also have a growing number of brilliant volunteers who help plant and maintain our trees. Our track record for planting in the UK is excellent: over the dry summer of 2022 we were out watering our trees on rotation - this kept our tree survival rates extremely high. We always plant with tree guards (plant based where possible), supports & added nutrients, as there is no point planting a tree if we aren't going to give it the very best chance to survive.
We also plant trees worldwide, we are working with an increasing number of international tree planters. It makes sense to plant trees in other countries: firstly, they cost less; secondly, we don't have space for 1.5 billion trees in the UK; and thirdly, trees planted in the UK grow slowly, planting trees nearer the equator where the is more sun per year means they grow faster and take the CO2 out of the atmosphere quicker. We generally work our international tree planting plans so that the cost is around £1 per tree, with UK tree planting included within the mix.
You may hear our competitors offering gold standard tree planting - this means carbon credits will be raised from trees you pay to plant. Before you purchase gold standard trees, ask the supplier when you'll receive the carbon credits from your trees. If the answer is never, then you need to find out where the credits from your trees are going to end up.
Our own story...
OblongTrees is run by Oblong (UK) Ltd - a data processing company. Back in 2016 we decided we wanted to offset our carbon footprint.
Carbon Calculations
We started by trying to calculate our carbon footprint, we found various companies online that would charge us a pretty penny to perform the calculation. We decided, instead, to tackle the calculation ourselves - we found a wealth of contradictory information and struggled to find answers. Do you include travel of your employees to work? What about the carbon manufacture costs of a laptop (A dell laptop creates 350kg of CO2 in its lifetime), should all of this be attributed to our business or should Dell hold full responsibility? We ended up with too many unanswered questions and using various calculation methods ended up with widely different figures.
Carbon Credits
Then we thought, forget the carbon calculation, let's buy some carbon credits instead. Maybe for a large company buying carbon credits might be easy, but for us it was not. Firstly they are expensive, secondly they aren't widely available and thirdly it seemed we would be buying carbon credits from trees that were planted many years ago (not really helping the planet now) also how do you know the trees were planted responsibly? We did not find carbon credits we felt comfortable buying.
Let's just plant some trees
Next we decided why not just pay someone to plant some trees for us. We started looking at various certified planters only to find that we could pay to plant trees and then later they would sell carbon credits off of the back of our trees (double counting, no thanks). We made enquiries in the UK and for example the Woodland Trust quoted us £20 a tree - which really just felt too expensive (we plant our own UK trees now). After thorough investigations we did find international planters we felt we could trust, we asked them to plant trees for us, give us proof of planting and made sure no carbon from our trees would be allocated elsewhere (our planters don't sell carbon credits from their trees).
OblongTrees
We successfully managed to reduce our carbon footprint - by planting trees. We found that tackling our carbon footprint really wasn't straight forward. There is a clear message out there right now for us to address climate change/reach net zero, but for companies/people wanting to take action, where do they turn? We didn't find anyone to turn to, we realised other companies also wanting to offset carbon emissions were experiencing similar issues and so we launched OblongTrees to help. Our very affordable top-down approach works well for SME companies, who don't need to calculate an exact carbon footprint, they can donate a set amount per employee and we'll use that money to plant trees.
Not for profit - in fact not even covering costs.
Currently all of the money received goes into planting trees (some of the donation price does now cover things like equipment & mileage for our volunteers). Our data company pays for the admin & advertising costs, our staff are volunteering their time for free.
Because of the way we run OblongTrees a real person will always get in touch regarding you donation.
Our aim is to be as transparent as possible. We will always tell our customers exactly where their trees will be planted. We provide updates via our social media and on the news page on this website, we'll also give you your own page on this website so you can monitor your trees.
We will eventually split OblongTrees into a self sufficient not for profit charity or Community Interest Company.
Scientists say growing trees has mind blowing potential
Planting trees is the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis. Trees store pollutants such as carbon and release oxygen into the atmosphere. Scientists say the effects trees have is mind blowing - they can negate the emissions that are pumped into the air by human activities.
© Oblong (UK) Ltd
