Category: General

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General

Erase the Impact of Your Holiday Light Display!

The return of in-person office parties. Finding a new gaming console in stock. Whether your pre-pandemic fruitcake is still safe to re-gift.

You’ve got a lot you might be worrying about this holiday season. The environmental impact of your holiday light display shouldn’t be one of them!

Do birds navigate by your holiday lights? Never fear: Hazel has you covered!

At Hazel, our focus is on making it easy for everyone to have an impact on climate change, without making you feel guilty about your personal impact on the climate. That’s why we set up specific “Baseline” options in Hazel: We wanted to identify an easy amount that everyone could contribute that would have an immediate impact on climate change. 

But, we know that some in our community like to eliminate the climate impact of specific climate-negative actions too. We include these in Hazel as “Supplemental” impacts – they’re a way of addressing a specific action that you want to eliminate. 

Hazel makes it easy to eliminate the negative climate impact of your holiday lights.

If you’re worried about the climate impact of your holiday lights, we launched our Holiday Light Display product to make it simple to erase its climate impact. To determine each product, we calculated the amount of electricity used to power various amounts of holiday lights (and inflatables) each night from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We then calculated the amount of carbon released, on average in the United States, to generate that amount of power over that period of time. 

The result is the three options you see in Hazel – a modest display (“Grinchy”), a decent-sized one (“Festive”) and, for households like mine, a large option (“Visible From Outer Space”).  

So if you’re concerned about the climate impact of the electricity used to power your holiday light display, stop worrying! Hazel makes it easy for you to enjoy the holidays guilt-free, knowing that you’re eliminating the impact of your holiday celebrations.

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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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General

Arbor: Kiribati’s unofficial Olympic sponsor!

After a 12-month delay, it is officially Olympic season! Our team at Arbor is already enjoying the festivities! 

As we enjoy the competition though, we would like to highlight one specific country that is participating: Kiribati, located in the South Pacific. The country has a population of 119,000 and will be sending three athletes to represent it to Tokyo. Kiribati has been called a “drowning paradise” due to its increasing rise in sea level each year. It is believed Kiribati will be the first country to be completely submerged due to climate change. 

The effects of climate change have become increasingly apparent all over the world, but Kiribati faces an immediate threat. Even if all global climate policy goals are met, Kiribati will likely be uninhabitable by 2100. To prepare, the government has begun to purchase land in Fiji in order to move inhabitants of Kiribati when the time comes. 

As you know, we here at Arbor like to be a part of the solution. As a part of the Arbor Saves Summer campaign, we have decided to be Kiribati’s (unofficial) sponsor! We will be offsetting the climate impact of their athlete’s travel to Tokyo, approximately 22 hours of air travel total for the three athletes who are representing Kiribati: Lataisi Mwea, Kinaua Biribo, and Ruben Katoatau. 

We know that eliminating the climate impact of their travel to the games doesn’t make up for the destruction of their native homeland, but this is a small token of support from Arbor as Kiribati faces the direct effects of climate change. Kiribati serves as a lesson to the very real impacts of climate change and a reminder to do our part while we still can. 

Do you want to get involved? There are non-profits that are trying to help the people of Kiribati grapple with the impacts of climate change, like the Kiribati Project, with the goal of supporting Kiribati citizens. More broadly, make sure to eliminate the impact of your negative climate actions with Arbor — each time you purchase the elimination of a tank of gas, your home’s electrical usage, or a flight, you’re funding the removal of carbon from the atmosphere, which helps the residents of Kiribati and all of us reverse the climate damage we’ve done. 

Learn more about the uncertain future of Kiribati here.

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General

Rimba Raya Orangutan Reserve Is Officially Fully Funded

Arbor partner, Stand for Trees, helps reverse climate change by protecting and expanding existing forests. Partnering with Stand For Trees, Arbor is proud to say that the Rimba Raya project in Borneo, Indonesia is now fully funded. Rimba Raya has fulfilled 100% of the project’s carbon impact fundraising goal,  allowing the forest to be protected for future generations.

Through the project’s lifetime, paper and palm oil industries threatened to develop the Rimba Raya Orangutan Reserve, endangering mangrove trees responsible for reducing atmospheric carbon and protecting 120 wildlife species. Mangrove trees are incredibly efficient at removing atmospheric carbon and have become an essential component to the peatland swamp forest’s environmental impact. 

Not only has the project had a positive environmental impact, it has also had a positive social and economic impact. In line with the three pillars of sustainability and the UN sustainable development goals, the project has worked to develop a sustainable fishing industry in the Seruyan river and programs such as clean cookstoves, mobile clinics, micro-financing, and school supplies within the region. When communities focus on successful sustainable  practices, economics and social rewards become granted.  

If you backed the Rimba Raya project through Arbor, you helped conserve a forest sequestering 100 million tons of CO2 in a 30 year period. Arbor’s community contributed to Rimba Raya’s goal and we are tremendously excited that the project has been successful. 

We look forward to working with Stand For Trees on future projects to help reverse climate change! Stay tuned to learn what the next opportunity will be!

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General

Arbor Celebrates Moms Fighting Climate Change

Climate change is overwhelming. The media only seems to cover negative news in terms of our climate’s direction. Not to worry: Moms all over the world are helping to solve the climate crisis. Moms understand that pollution is not distributed equally and bad air quality affects families globally. 

As a society, we must work as a community to battle this grand challenge, and moms will be the key to driving community change. Moms are leaders in renewable energy, transportation, sustainability, environmental engineering, and urban forestry within the climate movement. 

412 Technology wants to highlight the million members of the Moms Clean Air Force working to provide awareness, education, and climate activism to communities struggling with the adverse climate change effects. As an organization we appreciate all the work you do for our climate!

At Arbor we make it easy for moms (and everyone!) to solve climate change quickly and efficiently. With the stress and magnitude of this crisis, it may seem too impossible to fix. Arbor streamlines the process by giving moms the opportunity to choose climate reversal projects to offset their own personal climate impacting decisions. In our current user base, moms are already leading other users in offsets purchased with Arbor!

As Mother’s Day approaches this Sunday, take a moment to thank and appreciate your mom for all the work that she has done to bring you a sustainable life!