Categories
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.

Categories
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.