Category: Company News & Updates

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Company News & Updates General

Launching Hazel!

“I’m panicked about climate change. I get the science, I understand what’s happening around us–but government, businesses… no one is doing anything! I don’t understand how people think this is all magically just going to be OK!”

Sound familiar?

In the past year, we’ve talked to hundreds of you about climate change. What we’ve heard is, honestly, really depressing:

  • You’re worried about the future for you and your kids.
  • You’re avoiding the news because each climate story just gets worse and worse, and you feel powerless to fix it. 
  • You’re anxious that you’re not doing everything you can do to help the future of the planet, but you don’t see solutions that can have a real impact.
  • You’re frustrated. Really, really frustrated, because our elected leaders and those leading the business community aren’t doing enough to protect our future. 

We get it. We’re worried and frustrated too. So we’re taking action on climate change. We built Hazel to help solve it.

Hazel is a simple way for you to fight climate change by supporting leading carbon-removal projects around the world. We designed it to be easy and fun: No lengthy calculators that are too complicated to use. No need to become a part-time scientist to understand how to take action. Hazel makes it simple to make a positive impact on the climate.

Also, critically, Hazel is guilt free. 

For years, companies that have sold carbon offsets to consumers have focused on personal guilt. They force you through some calculator that spits out a number to show you exactly how awful a human being you are (called your “carbon footprint”). Once you’ve calculated just how awful you are, they then use that figure as a bludgeon to guilt you into purchasing offsets from them to offset that amount of carbon. The entire focus is on making you feel as guilty and bad about yourself as possible, so they can then sell you a solution.

We think that’s awful. 

Look, you’ve got enough in your life trying to make you feel bad. If you’ve come to Hazel to see how you can help solve climate change, you’re one of the good people! Why should we try to make you feel guilty about wanting to help? We don’t think that makes any sense. Instead, we designed Hazel to celebrate any amount of impact you have on the climate. Because if you use Hazel–at any level–you’re part of the solution, and you should feel great about playing a role in fixing our climate crisis!

We’re proud to announce that Hazel is now available on both the App Store and Google Play. In coming weeks, we’ll be adding new carbon-removal partners, additional features and a fun interactive experience as a reward for making an impact with Hazel. We’re excited to have you joining us on our journey towards having a giant climate impact. 

We all have an enormous task in front of us to clean up the mess we’ve made, draw down global carbon levels and start reversing climate change. But, we at Hazel believe that there is still time to fix the climate before our world is irreparably changed. We know that if we all work together and do a small part, we can collectively have a massive impact. 

We’re worried and frustrated about climate change too, but we cared enough to build Hazel. We hope you care enough to use it. Together, we can start reversing climate change.

Tap here for Hazel on iOS.

Tap here for Hazel on Android.

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Company News & Updates

Introducing: The New Hazel!

I’m excited to announce the new brand name for our climate-change app: Hazel! 

For those of you who’ve been with us through the alpha and beta testing phases, you know that we started life as “Arbor”. We liked this name fine: Trees… climate change… it seemed like a fit, but it was a little generic. More importantly, once we really got a sense for who our users were likely to be and what emotional impact we wanted to have with them, “Arbor” was no longer a perfect fit. 

So we went back to the drawing board, and after multiple weeks’ worth of research, brainstorming, testing and refinement, we landed at Hazel. We’re excited about the name, and we hope you love it as much as we do!

So why Hazel? 

First, there aren’t a lot of Hazel products or other preconceptions about the word that anyone has, from what we learned, which is great–it means we can build a brand from scratch without needing to deal with preconceptions or having other products come to mind. 

As a word, Hazel evokes nature and woodlands (Hazel trees, Hazelnuts), and also an Earthy green color that we liked. In Celtic lore, Hazel trees represented wisdom and grew in the center of the Otherworld–for ages, cutting down a Hazel was illegal in both Ireland and Scotland. In both Norse and Greek mythology, Hazel trees represented knowledge. Since we hope to introduce people to a simple way to have a climate impact, the wisdom & knowledge association made sense.

More critically though, Hazel hit the emotional resonance with users in our testing that we were aiming for. At its core, our app is about making people feel calmer and more reassured about climate change–because if we all put in a little bit of effort, we really can be a force for global change and make things better! In our testing, Hazel scored very high among our target users as a name that made them feel calm and relaxed–exactly the reaction we’re hoping for.

If you participated in any of our brainstorming or name feedback surveys, thank you! Your thoughts and reactions had a direct role in helping us choose our new brand. For everyone, we hope that you love our new brand as much as we do.

We look forward to working with you to make it a brand and product that you love. 

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Company News & Updates

New Project Alert! Stand for Trees: South Cardamom

Cambodia, Koh Kong Province, Cardamom National Park, Chipat Village area, Preak Piphot River, Ranger Patrol

We are excited to introduce our newest project in partnership with Stand for Trees: South Cardamom based in Trapeang Rung, Cambodia! This project not only has a significant climate impact but also focuses on endangered species, biodiversity, and economic development.  

Southern Cardamom is a great project option for Arbor users because it’s the perfect successor to the Rimba Raya project that successfully completed a few weeks ago. Like Rimba Raya, it focuses on an Asian tropical rainforest and has a significant wildlife conservation component. 

Where this project excels though is its community impact–with thousands of local inhabitants living in or near poverty in the surrounding community, we wanted a project that focused on the economic opportunity too. The work at Southern Cardamom provides hundreds of high-paying jobs to the local community, scholarships for higher education, and through ecotourism creates a new way for the community to monetize this valuable native resource–with a focus on conservation. 

The area being preserved by this project is immense. Southern Cardamom protects approximately 1.2M acres of lowland tropical rainforest in Cambodia’s Cardamom Rainforest landscape. The Cardamoms are a critical part of the Indo-Burma global biodiversity hotspot–one of the planet’s highest conservation priorities. These forests are threatened by illegal logging for high-value timber, fuel for Cambodia’s garment factories, and deforestation by outsiders for land sales. 

This project addresses these threats by supporting local communities and local government with protected area management, law enforcement and by helping to develop alternative livelihoods that depend on forests and biodiversity. 

Biodiversity Impact 

The Cardamom landscape is the region’s largest climate regulator and carbon sink, critical habitat for countless species, and, with 22 major waterways, an important watershed. This project supports a team of 98 rangers and 25 anti-poaching community members that patrol the forests and monitor activities. 

Endangered Species Impact 

The project is home to more than 50 endangered species such as the Asian forest elephant, Asiatic black bear, sun bear, pileated gibbon, Bengal slow tories, mainland clouded leopard and fishing cat, as well as the critically endangered Sunda pangolin, Siamese crocodile, Southern river terrapin, and giant ibis. 

Community Impact 

Around 16,000 people, many of whom are below the poverty line, live in the areas surrounding the project. Southern Cardamom is providing scholarships for higher education through a community fund; helping to ensure permanent land access for all community members and expanding its award-winning community-based ecotourism projects. 

Emissions Impact 

Southern Cardamom will prevent the emissions of 110 million tonnes of CO2 over its 30-yr lifetime, validated and verified under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS). It has also achieved CCB Gold status for exceptional climate and biodiversity benefits. 

To support this project you may add your email to our waitlist for the Arbor app below: 

https://gethazelapp.com

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Company News & Updates

Celebrate Arbor Day With Stand For Trees

Happy Arbor Day! 

For our namesake holiday, all of us at Arbor wanted to take a second to express our thanks to the team at Stand For Trees, our initial carbon project partner. It’s their team who oversee and help coordinate projects around the world that directly impact climate change. When you purchase the climate reversal of a tank of gas, a flight or home electrical usage through Arbor, you’re directly funding Stand For Tree’s work around the world!

We started working with their team in fall of 2020 for our  initial prototype launch. We needed a flexible partner who could have significant field impact  and deal with the vagaries and uncertainties of working with a startup — after all, we had no idea whether anyone would use our product when we launched! They’ve been a wonderful partner with us through this journey.

We originally identified three of their projects for our platform that we felt would provide a diverse range of options for our users:

Rimba Raya Orangutan Reserve: Who doesn’t get excited about orangutans? Orangutans + a huge carbon impact was a sure winner for us! This project in Indonesia preserves, protects and helps expand lowland forest covering over 116,000 acres. The mangrove forests in the project are some of the most efficient trees at capturing carbon on the planet. As a bonus, the project is home to more than 120 threatened and endangered species (yes, including orangutans) and provides new, environmentally friendly economic opportunities to the local community. 

This little guy grows up safe while his home helps combat global warming.
You see “jungle”. We see “carbon capture”.

Amazon Valparaiso: When you want to have a huge carbon impact, it’s hard to go wrong with supporting the Amazon. This project in the Amazon basin in Brazil prevents the destruction of 16 million trees, which are projected to capture an additional 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over the next decade. The area has some of the highest density of biodiversity in the world.

Kasigau Sanctuary: For our third launch project, we wanted something different–and this opportunity to combine carbon impact with African wildlife protection was perfect! Kasigau protects a unique resource–a dryland forest between two national parks in Kenya. Projected to capture millions of additional tonnes of carbon in the coming years, it’s also a critical wildlife corridor for 11,000+ African elephants, giraffes and other threatened species. 

A herd of elephants protected by the Kasigau Sanctuary.

Since our initial launch, we’re proud that our work with Stand for Trees has resulted in the removal of dozens of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. We look forward to expanding our impact and working with on other impactful projects in the future!

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Company News & Updates

Earth Day Results Are In: A New Record!

You did it!

We challenged you, the Arbor community, to eliminate the impact from as many tanks of gas as we could for Earth Day, and boy did you step up!

Here’s the final tally:

27% of our current user base participated (a new record!)

13 tanks of gas elimination were purchased (a new record!)

For a little context, 13 tanks is the equivalent of:

  • 5,800 miles — the distance from our headquarters in Atlanta to Fairbanks Alaska (or 221 marathons!)
  • 370 2-liter bottles of soda
  • Half a year of gas usage for the typical American

These purchases will remove the carbon emitted from burning this much gasoline from our atmosphere. It’s a small, but significant!, step in our community’s goal of helping to reverse climate change!

We couldn’t have hit this milestone without you–we’re incredibly grateful for your help and support. Let’s keep up the great work!

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Company News & Updates

Join Arbor’s Earth Day Campaign!

This Earth Day, we’re doing something we’ve never tried before: We’re going to try to set a new one-day record for the total number of gas fill-ups we eliminate from the atmosphere!

Starting at midnight tonight and going through midnight tomorrow, when you select and purchase the elimination of any tank of gas in the Arbor app your purchase will count toward the campaign total! So whether you drive a Prius or a Suburban, your gas elimination purchase through Arbor will make you both climate positive AND help the Arbor community reach its goal.

Our initial goal is to eliminate the impact of 20 tanks of gas. Fund the elimination of a tank you’ve purchased recently with Arbor tomorrow and join the rest of our community in reaching our goal!

Why gas?

We decided to focus on gas because, as pandemic restrictions lift around the country, we’re all starting to drive again–and every time we use a tank of gas we’re releasing hundreds of pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This directly contributes to the climate crisis.

With Arbor, however, you can easily purchase the removal of a gas-tank’s-worth of carbon from the atmosphere, erasing your negative impact on the climate. It’s an easy, affordable step we can all take to have a positive impact on the planet. So as we all begin to emerge from multiple months of pandemic lockdowns, we picked gas purchases as the activity we’d focus on for Earth Day 2021.

How much impact will this have?

Great journeys are comprised of multiple small steps. In a similar way, every action we take has an impact on the climate–the question is whether it’s positive or negative. With Arbor, you can turn even negative actions like using a tank of gas into a net-positive for the climate and help reverse climate change.

Although 20 tanks of gas is small in the grand scheme of things, it’s not insignificant–it’s about half of what an average American purchases in a year. Alternatively, it’s about 9,000 miles of driving–the equivalent of driving from New York to LA three times (or the distance from Lisbon, Portugal to Magadan, Russia if you were to drive the entire length of Europe AND the Trans-Siberian Highway!)

That’s a lot of impact.

How do I follow along?

If you’re an Arbor user, keep your phone handy–we’ll be sending out updates (as app alerts to your phone) all day! We’ll also be sending out updates via our email list and social media channels.

Sign up for our email list and get on the waitlist for Arbor on our home page.

If you haven’t already, follow Arbor on social media:

How else can I help Arbor fight climate change?

Tell your friends to sign up for our waitlist (tell them to add their email address here)! We’ll keep them updated on climate change & how our product is developing and get them early access to the app.

We’re rolling out a ton of exciting new features to the app over the next few months, and we’d love to get their reaction & feedback too! (Plus: The more people in the Arbor community, the more impact we can have!)

This climate change stuff and all is great, but can you just show me cute videos of polar bear cubs?

Sigh.

OK, how’s this?

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Company News & Updates

412 Joins the Greenhouse Accelerator Program

Today, the 412 Technology team is excited to announce that we have been invited to join the 2021 Greenhouse Accelerator program! This is significant news for us, and it validates the path we’re on to building an platform and community dedicated to helping reverse climate change.

Our organization joins an established group of innovative startups in the environmental and sustainability space.  Based in Atlanta, GA, the Greenhouse Accelerator program provides networking, advice and investment to entrepreneurs and startups working in cleantech and sustainability. The core of the program is pairing startups with an “accompagneur”, Greenhouse’s name for mentor, drawn from the program’s diverse professional network who can kick start production, provide guidance and feedback and help with 412’s community impact. 

We are incredibly fortunate to be able to take this next step with the Greenhouse.  Our organization has spent time over the past few months getting to know their leadership and team. The opportunity to get formally paired with an accompagneur to refine our product means we’ll be able to have a swifter and more significant impact on the climate crisis.

For startups like us who become accepted into the program, the Greenhouse Accelerator’s services remain complimentary. If we continue to strengthen and formulate success, the program expects our organization to help other new and emerging cleantech startups with advice and consulting. We are thankful for this opportunity to work with Greenhouse Accelerator and excited to help build the overall sustainability ecosystem in Atlanta and the Southeast!

Please contact us at info@412technology.com to learn more about how we’ll participate in the Greenhouse Accelerator program. Interested in being an early user of Arbor? Sign up here to get the app.