
Ask HN: Plant a Trillion Trees Campaign? - mjfern
It seems one of the few opportunities to meaningfully help the planet and avoid the worst of climate change is to plant trees (1).<p>After learning this, I googled &quot;donate a tree&quot; and &quot;plant a tree&quot; and was met with dozens of results for nonprofits, many of which I had never heard of.<p>Which of the nonprofits was the best run? Which was the most efficient at converting donations into trees? Where were the trees being planted to ensure the planting was protected and sustainable?<p>My idea is to create a simple campaign website,  trilliontrees.org, that serves as a rallying call to plant trees and that compares and provides guidance on the myriad of nonprofits involved in planting trees.<p>Anyone interested to partner on this?<p>(1) https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www-m.cnn.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;07&#x2F;04&#x2F;world&#x2F;forests-capture-two-thirds-of-carbon-emissions-scn-intl&#x2F;index.html
======
napsterbr
Here's an idea to help "viralize" tree planting, especially among younger
folks.

How about a tree social network? A website/app that incentivices the person to
plant a tree and adopt it as a pet. The person plants a tree, names it and
takes a few photos. A profile is then created.

The person can find nearby trees to socialize. Some cute artwork may help
engaging people. Snapchat-like filters could be used to "dress up" the tree,
further increasing cuteness (and the engagement).

People keep score by how many trees they've planted, which gamifies the
process.

This may sound crazy (and possibly it is) but hey, it may just work.

If you (or anyone else) like the idea, I'd be more than happy to help build
it, with the condition that it should be open source. Email is on profile.

ETA: Open source condition

~~~
highhedgehog
Hey, that might be cool! I could try working on it in spare time, would you
like to write down ideas?

~~~
napsterbr
Just brainstorming here, hopefully someone can further develop those ideas.

\- I think it should feel more like a game than a social network. More like
Pokemon Go than Facebook. I'd gamify as much as possible.

\- Some people want to plant trees _and_ are able to do so. Others aren't.
Maybe they don't have the time, or they live in a concrete jungle. I think the
project should focus on both segments.

\- Those who can't plant, whatever the reason, may want to donate to projects
that would plant. And those who can plant, may need guidance (where to buy
seeds? where to plant? what to plant? etc). This website should facilitate
both cases, as much as possible.

\- Let's say that for each dollar donated, one tree is planted. That number
(trees "remotely" planted by the person) should be made public, as some sort
of virtual currency.

\- Ideally, trees planted as proxy (via donation) would be photographed and
shown to the donor. Unfortunately that's not practical.

\- I think each person should have their own profile (with their own name,
picture) and they could create a "sub-profile" for each tree. Not sure about
this. But having a separate profile (login) per tree would actually be a
problem for those planting lots of trees.

\- (Or, using a better analogy for "sub-profile", people = Github profile,
trees = Github repositories)

\- This "sub-profile" could be similar to a Facebook group. You can post "life
events" of the tree, photos, comments, etc. You can browse other people's
trees (and their own, actual profile as well).

\- Each tree planted by the users may have a location at the world map
(provided by the user). This way we can show nearby trees and fellow "tree
planters".

\- We can have mini-games like "visit/photograph/'collect' trees near you".
Similar (to a certain point) to Pokemon Go. When completing such mini-games
the person is rewarded with the virtual currency.

\- People may use the virtual currency with their own trees or others' trees.
Not sure actually _what_ they could spend it on.

\- I really like the idea on sister comment from @secfirstmd. I think
integrating related concepts further improves the platform.

\----

Also, something important to remember, is that this website alone likely
wouldn't get anywhere near OP's objective of 1 trillion trees, but it
certainly can make an impact on awareness, or at the very least increase
people's contact with nature (even in large cities).

~~~
mksmsrkn
+1 on gamifying it, newly planted tree could be used as a in-app
bonus/item/assets

\---

talking about social networks - such things can easily be adopted by companies
like Facebook, if they simply put a planted tree counter next to everyone's
profile, (allowing those how can't plant to donate for others to plant) it can
lead to competitions among friends/family/groups to be #1 planters and do lots
of good.

------
nscalf
This seems really interesting, and it obviously is important to be done.
Something to note is that you'll likely need to buy up land to make sure it is
secure when trees are planted. If you plan to buy swathes of land out of
country, how do you deal with tree poachers? Probably your best bet is to buy
in-country land and plant trees there. Perhaps do some research on what trees
are more effective for carbon fixing.

And, of course, if you can find a way to make an economy around buying trees
without destroying them, you'll have the most success. I've been trying to
think of a good way to make an economy around that, but haven't come up with
anything good. Maybe eco-tourism is the best option?

Send me a message, I'd be glad to chat more about this.

~~~
setr
>tree poachers

Is this actually a thing? I always imagined tree cutting to be noisy, heavy,
difficult and fairly non-subtle... stealing a tree seems like a really
difficult task to pull off

Although I guess if you have a large forest, you’d have a lot of ground to
cover and lot of coverage..

~~~
ryanmercer
>Is this actually a thing?

Oh man the world is far worse than something like stealing trees for lumber,
people are stealing entire BEACHES!

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/13/628894815/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/13/628894815/episode-853-peak-
sand)

Transcript:
[https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...](https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=628890875)

~~~
lowdose
Thanks for this link!

------
8bitsrule
Today I discovered the 'Billion Tree Campaign' was started by the UN in 2006.
Wiki says they'd planted 15B trees in 193 countries by 2018 (315M in the US).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Tree_Campaign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Tree_Campaign)

Looks like the UN handed the program to 'Plant for the Planet' (Germany) in
2011.

'[https://www.plant-for-the-planet.org/en/home](https://www.plant-for-the-
planet.org/en/home)

It'd be fantastic to see this organized nationwide in the U.S. ... and
promoted as part of the campaign.

P.S. This video, 'Planting Bare Root Trees With A Dibble', shows how very easy
it can be to plant a seedling. Anyone can learn it in a short time.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhqa3yeLxhk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhqa3yeLxhk)

------
moneytide1
Perhaps your website could provide coordination with land owners to show which
areas are eligible for tree planting. People could even use an app to
designate which areas they intend to plant on, and mark as complete. New areas
would be opened up as more municipalities (or private land owners) jump on
board. There is already a federal effort for tree planting, as my family owns
some hunting land that they are paid to keep trees growing (likely for local
soil/water retention efforts)

This wouldn't be the first time people have banded together for "Emergency
Conservation Work" (FDR administration 5 billion trees):

[https://treesource.org/news/lands/ccc-tree-
planting/](https://treesource.org/news/lands/ccc-tree-planting/)

I've had decent success planting things after amending the soil where the
rootball is expected to be. This involves removing some of the clay-like soil
and replacing with both seasoned and fresh compost. Planting a trillion trees
within a rather urgent window of time may not be eligible for this sort of
micromanagement (plus the root system of a tree will be quite large), but I
still like the idea of spending free time doing this sort of thing.

------
chewz
Poland is paying up to 2000 euro per ha for converting agriculture land into
forrest. There is also a lot of additional subsidies for forrests on private
land which can add up to few thousand euro.

You can actually make small but stable profit from buying land and converting
into forest.

> Priority will be given to those who intend to plant a forest in the so-
> called ecological corridors, in areas threatened by water erosion, in areas
> adjacent to inland waters and forests, in areas with a slope of more than 12
> degrees. Also, those who have land for afforestation in voivodships with a
> forest cover of less than 30% will get points. Depending on the species
> composition of the crop and the previously mentioned criteria, the amount of
> support can range from PLN 4,984 to PLN 7,624 per hectare. In addition,
> payment is possible for fencing of crops.

Assigned budget 2014-2020 for this project is 300 milion euro.

I believe there are similar schemes in other EU countries.

Link in Polish: [http://www.lasy.gov.pl/pl/informacje/aktualnosci/jak-
zdobyc-...](http://www.lasy.gov.pl/pl/informacje/aktualnosci/jak-zdobyc-
dofinansowanie-za-zalesianie)

~~~
chewz
Forrest area in Poland is growing since WWII from 20,8% in 1946 to 29,5% in
2016. The target for 2020 is 30% area of the country under forrest and for
2050 - 33%. 80% of forrests in Poland is under management of Lasy Panstwowe -
state-owned company with political reach.

[https://pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasy_w_Polsce](https://pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasy_w_Polsce)

[https://lasy.gov.pl](https://lasy.gov.pl)

Additionaly areas of older forrests (over 80 years old) increased by 50% from
1946. There is also a policy of making forrests more ecologically diverse.

------
aoeaoeaoe
Helping a planet that already helps itself.

"Here we analyse 35 years’ worth of satellite data and provide a comprehensive
record of global land-change dynamics during the period 1982–2016. We show
that—contrary to the prevailing view that forest area has declined
globally—tree cover has increased by 2.24 million km2 (+7.1% relative to the
1982 level). This overall net gain is the result of a net loss in the tropics
being outweighed by a net gain in the extratropics."

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9)

Human, an fascinating animal yet with such a high opinion of itself.

~~~
garg
[https://phys.org/news/2018-08-global-forest-loss-years-
offse...](https://phys.org/news/2018-08-global-forest-loss-years-offset.html)

"They further report that much of the new growth came about due to efforts by
humans (such as reforestation efforts in China and parts of Africa) and
because of global warming—warmer temperatures have raised timberlines in some
mountainous regions, and allowed forests to creep into tundra areas. Other
areas of new tree growth resulted from large farm abandonments in places like
Russia and the U.S. The researchers report that their calculations showed that
human activities have directly caused approximately 60 percent of new global
tree growth. They suggest their technique for monitoring tree cover could be
used to predict tree cover changes in the future due to global warming."

So reforestation efforts led by humans has contributed to this change. AND
global warming caused by humans has caused the tundra to warm up enough that
forests have moved up there.

------
kingkawn
Information, live maps updating us moment to moment where new trees are going
in, a way to communicate with others about planting methods, suppliers of
hardware, and nurseries or seed providers, a network that is solely dedication
to the actualization of the idea as seamlessly as is possible. Make an action
network of steps and allow people to volunteer to be assigned a role at some
geographic radius they preselect. The entire process can be organized to have
everyone as effectively as possible making it happen. Hopefully the
possibility of actually resolving climate change in a tangible way would help
it spread and everyone could get involved together and be proud that,
regardless of everything else that’s wrong, we actually got together and did
something good.

------
jbob2000
Trees plant themselves, they have been doing so for hundreds of thousands of
years.

It would take a serious amount of carbon for humans to do this task for mother
nature - we need trucks to transport the seeds and soil to where we want them
planted, we need to grow food so the human can eat to get energy to plant the
seeds.

The best thing we can do is let mother nature grow. Build up instead of out
and stop deforesting for farm land.

~~~
codingdave
Exactly how big do you think seeds are? Soil already exists on the ground. It
is the ground. Take a walk, take some seeds, plant them.

The trend to argue against helpful ideas is contrary to the goals of improving
the world. Maybe every idea isn't perfect. Maybe no idea will solve all of the
problem. But if the top 100 ideas each is completed with 1% efficiency, maybe
that will all add up. Maybe we'll improve things enough to let better ideas
come to fruition. So maybe we should stop criticizing, and start acting.

------
mjfern
As someone pointed out in another thread, a campaign already exists at
[https://www.trilliontreecampaign.org](https://www.trilliontreecampaign.org).
That said, this isn't providing the information that I'm looking for.

------
fghtr
>Which of the nonprofits was the best run?

One can try to search for corresponding nonprofits with
[https://CharityNavigator.org](https://CharityNavigator.org). For example,
there are

[https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...](https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=6907)

[https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...](https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4157)

and more...

------
fiberhood
I'm interested in partnering. I envision it as crowdfunding surrounded with
some form of community. Buy up land, plant trees, webcams and video's to visit
it, excursions to go there for a picknick. I love the idea tho give each tree
an email/web/chat address.

But also plant solar panels. Conservation, buy or lease pieces of rainforest
that need protecting. Attract the money from carbon tax, emission rights,
companies and governments that want to greenwash their reputation. I have been
inspired to work on this ever since seeing [1] when I was 10 years old. My
grandfather bought a forest and walked me through it when I was a 4 year old
boy. It instilled the idea of stewardship for our planet. And then there is
the (mythical) 500 year old tree story about New College, Oxford to inspire
[2]. A trillion trees is not enough, there are 3 trillion already, we need to
double that [3]. When I go on walks I'll check up on all the trees my mom or
dad and I talked about. I'll visit them, rather then their graves.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvYh8ar3tc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvYh8ar3tc)

[2][https://cherwell.org/2013/10/08/cameron-in-tory-
conference-o...](https://cherwell.org/2013/10/08/cameron-in-tory-conference-
oxford-analogy-blunder/)

[3]
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Crowther/publica...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Crowther/publication/281820435_Crowther_et_al_2015_Nature/links/55f9781408ae07629deb6269.pdf)

------
nickwarren
I’m playing with the idea of a trees4travel nonprofit. Eco-conscious
individuals or business that requires employees to travel can quickly using
some basic information make a donation to plant trees/take other climate
change action in order to offset the impact of that flight - in an effort to
become carbon neutral/negative.

LMK if this is interesting at all, anyone is free to partner or run with it -
whatever to help the climate

------
chewz
China has announced plans to plant new forests in 2018 that will cover at
least 6.6 million hectares, an area roughly the size of Ireland.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/05/china-plant-
fore...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/05/china-plant-forest-size-
ireland-bid-become-world-leader-conservation/)

------
nickserv
Just plant some trees, it's easy:

\- Gather seeds from native species in your area.

\- place 2-3 large seeds or 5-10 smaller seeds in a pot. I use old 1l milk
containers.

\- Put the pots outside, a terrace or balcony will do.

\- As soon as the seeds sprout, find a spot to plant. Can be natural (prairie,
forest, ..) or not (parks, roundabouts, parking lots, yards,medians,...). Just
ask for permission if planting on private property.

\- Go back during dry spells or heatwaves and water them.

\- Profit?

~~~
garg
It is legal to plant local indigenous trees and plants in national/state
parks? Or is this classified as guerrilla gardening?

------
agilvarry
Personally, I use [https://www.ecosia.org/(who](https://www.ecosia.org/\(who)
would probably be a great company to try and partner with) as my web browser
since they donate most of their profits to tree planting operations, and I
give some money every month to Eden Project, who have been planting trees for
a very long time and seem to have a good reputation.

If you're interested in helping out with their efforts it might be worth
reaching out to trillion tree campaign. Their website really needs some work,
but they've already done a lot of good work with some really big
organizations. No need to re-do work when there is something already out there
that you could potentially help expand on.

------
buboard
Most people are going to plant a tree in the middle of nowhere, take a few
selfies, and then leave it to die or be eaten.

Or they 'll plant too many trees in their backyard, which they will have to
cut as soon as they grow too much, because it's annoying/inconvenient

------
hkyeti
If we care about trees work on stopping the number one cause of deforestation
- meat.

~~~
olleromam91
Source?

~~~
hkyeti
One for example: [https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/09/when-tree-falls-it-
deforest...](https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/09/when-tree-falls-it-
deforestation)

Land is cleared to make room for cattle grazing and for crops used to feed
animals.

ie- meat

------
tathagatadg
Can trees be uniquely identified? If yes, use tree-fingerprint and incentivize
increasing age of unique trees. In return you get carbon offset credits that
you can sell to make money. Like crypto, but greener.

EDIT: grammar

------
sansnomme
Better, build an API for planting trees. Plenty of hipster SaaSes would be
happy to add a "We will plant one tree for every subscription" slogan to their
landing page.

------
chewz
Forrest area in Poland is growing since WWII from 20,8% in 1946 to 29,5% in
2016. The target for 2020 is 30% area of the country under forrest and for
2050 - 33%.

80% of forrests in Poland is under management of Lasy Panstwowe - state-owned
company with political reach.

[https://pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasy_w_Polsce](https://pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasy_w_Polsce)

[https://lasy.gov.pl](https://lasy.gov.pl)

------
vinayms
I think the correct way to go about this is to just encourage people to plant
trees suitable and native to their (people's) environment. And let it scale.
Better, also tell them not to fell trees left right and center.

In the exuberance of ecological conservation and all that, we must not
overlook and override what nature would have done. For instance, one shouldn't
plant a water sucking tree where it wouldn't naturally occur, and damage the
balance.

------
teknico
I wanted to donate to such a non-profit and I found three comparison websites,
quite different from each other, that all recommended Trees for the Future:
[http://trees.org/](http://trees.org/) .

They've been working for twenty years, already planted 150 million trees, and
most importantly, train people in Africa to create forest gardens while
lifting themselves out of poverty.

Now they plant eight trees per day for me too. <3

------
squish78
Many US states have forestry services which will send you free or inexpensive
native saplings.

A few examples:

[http://www.gatrees.org/reforestation/ordering-
information/](http://www.gatrees.org/reforestation/ordering-information/)
[https://www.tn.gov/agriculture/forests/seedlings.html](https://www.tn.gov/agriculture/forests/seedlings.html)

------
bozoUser
how can one find areas in the bay area to go plan trees with a bunch of
friends and not be associated with any campaigns etc?

With varying local rules and regulations, plant species adaptability, invasive
vs non-invasive species debate raging on, it would be great to have a website
which gives you info. about the local areas in the range of 100 miles where
one can go and plant trees with this information readily available;

I would go one step ahead and propose to also have the saplings shipped or
sold either from this website or have distribution centers/farms closer to the
region where these saplings can be collected; these centers would be similar
to your regular Home Depots etc. where you would have all the information
readily available; One can also pay a subscription fees of 5$/month to have
the farm take care of these saplings until it becomes self sufficient.

Before someone asks about how we would raise the initial capital for these
distribution centers is thru carbon tax/federal/state funds.

------
cwmoore
I once worked with a guy who'd coordinated planting on the ground with aerial
seedling drops, saplings in cones from airplanes, as illustrated here:

[https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-
scienc...](https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-
science/aerial-reforestation2.htm)

------
tmaly
I would recommend playing to peoples desires. People like beautiful yards and
gardens, and you get people to plant more than just one tree if you educate
them.

Tell them they can make their place beautiful and fight climate change.

I planted 6 evergreen bushes and 5 trees in just the past few months, and my
yard is quite small.

------
_448
A friend of mine created a subreddit* a while back to encourage people to
plant one tree a year. Unfortunately, the subreddit did not get any traction.

* [https://www.reddit.com/r/a_tree_a_year](https://www.reddit.com/r/a_tree_a_year)

------
saluki
How about governments (counties/states) setting up areas that are memorial
forests where people come and plant a tree or multiple trees for loved ones.

Encourage people to plant trees for previous generations of family members.
And have small in memory of markers for each tree.

------
martincollignon
You may find relevant people to partner with in this community:
[https://techimpactmakers.com/](https://techimpactmakers.com/)

Among other projects they've already released climatechoices.co

------
Spooky23
Cool idea. In my city, everyone is obsessed with cutting down trees because
landlords don’t want to rake leaves and the utility company eviscerated many
older trees.

------
AlleyTrotter
I have a dozen in my back yard I planted 20 years ago.

Ahead of my time!

------
janfkowalski
How about contacting XR regarding your idea? Regards

~~~
mjfern
Who/what is XR?

~~~
vzidex
XR is Extinction Rebellion, a group non-violently protesting the lack of
action on climate change by governments and corporations. They've been growing
pretty rapidly, though I'm not sure how far up their alley planting trees
would be.

~~~
mjfern
Ah, yes. Thank you!

------
mkbkn
I'm used to searching a lot on the Internet and thus have made Ecosia as my
primary search engine.

It plants trees from its ad revenues.

------
mcqueenjordan
I’d love to help partner on this. Coding, marketing, AWS hosting, whatever I
can do. Email is in my profile.

------
Papirola
this is being done in Israel for decades: [http://www.kkl-jnf.org/forestry-
and-ecology/](http://www.kkl-jnf.org/forestry-and-ecology/)

------
jessehorne
I'm working on something similar because a while back, I was in a similar
situation as you, and was curious. The plans are to allow users to have a neat
looking visualization where every single tree that has been planted can be
rendered depending on where they're viewing. You may see a lot with a green
border that means we can fill that entire lot up. "Here's how close we are to
filling up lot X in Atlanta...", etc. There will be scoreboards. One for
individuals, and one for organizations. You will of course be able to filter
by region as well. I'd like to gamify it a bit but that's something I'm having
trouble figuring out. Of course if someone with a lot of money wants to get a
bunch of trees planted, that's great! Pay-to-win is pretty cool in this
scenario. I want their contribution to be appreciated and noticed! However,
there are ways to fund this sort of work besides money coming directly out of
peoples pocket, too. And the people making that happen need to be appreciated
and noticed, too. Revenue from ads could go towards the work, which would mean
there needs to be a reason to stay on the site a bit, and whatever other
factors are relevant there. That could be quality content, games, a community
of sorts. A LOT can and will go into it, but I plan on getting a MVP out the
door within the next month. Stay tuned! There's so much to this I'll make a
post on HN when it's time. ;)

The important thing for me is to make this FOR profit and to give a QUALITY
guide on how to basically "steal" this idea, assuming I am able to execute it
effectively. Then, the competition can begin. As much as I hate capitalism,
you can't deny it's ability to get people to work really hard. In my opinion,
that's what needs to happen. To hell with the non-profit sector, for now.

If you have ideas or would just like to discuss this a bit, feel free to do so
by replying, or getting in touch. My personal email is j.horne2796@gmail.com

------
janfkowalski
how about contactong XR regarding your idea? Regards

