Tag: update

Categories
Company News & Updates General

New Project Alert: Kenya Tree Planting

Newly planted tree seedlings in Kenya.

Just in time for Earth Week:

We’re excited to announce our latest forestry project–planting millions of new trees in Central and Southern Kenya!

Tree planting is a classic approach to removing carbon from the atmosphere–one that we’re happy to include in our portfolio of projects. The process couldn’t be more simple: As trees grow, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, turn the carbon into wood, then respire oxygen.

Tree planting has to be done correctly though–successful tree plantings need on-going care and maintenance to ensure that the trees grow to maturity. Critically, planting also has to be done with the support of the local community to protect the newly planted forests for the long-haul. The impact of the trees is undone if they die before reaching their full size, or if someone cuts them down.

That’s why we’re so excited to offer this project, run by The International Small Group and Tree Planting Program (TIST). TIST works with local smallhold farmers to teach them about the economic value of trees and how to care for them correctly. By ensuring that trees are an economic benefit to the local community, TIST creates an environment where trees are valued, protected and cared for as a critical local asset–in addition to being of benefit to the planet! We think this is a great approach to reforestation projects, and we’re excited to support their work in Kenya through Hazel!

Currently, more than 94,000 farmers in Kenya are working with TIST–an incredible local base of support! These farmers form 13,800 Small Groups, which work together to oversee and support their mutual planting efforts.

The results have already been impressive! Already this project is responsible for almost 13,000,000 new tress–and have planted recently more than 5,600,000 seedlings. Each of these trees, at maturity, will capture multiple tonnes of carbon, directly removing the carbon from the atmosphere that causes climate change. It’s a huge impact!

In addition to the impact on climate change and the economic benefit, the trees being planted have a significant impact on the local environment–from helping prevent erosion and runoff during the rainy seasons to improving the soil quality by generating leaf litter (and in some cases, directly fixing nitrogen into the soil).

By supporting this project with Hazel, you’ll enable this project to:

  • Sequester more than 2,800 tonnes of carbon annually
  • Capture atmospheric carbon in newly planted forests
  • Provide an economic opportunity for local farmers (through fruit, nut and other resource harvesting)
  • Improve local soil quality and biodiversity

Reforestation (replanting trees where they once grew) and afforestation (growing new trees in new locations) are significant nature-based solutions for climate change. We’ve been looking for a project that met our standards for impact while also having an impact on the local community, and we found it in this project.

We’re excited to add this project to our portfolio of projects in Hazel–we hope it’s one of your favorites too!

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. 

Categories
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?