Treeapp: How To Plant Trees For Free Everyday

It’s a well-known fact that planting trees can reduce carbon in the atmosphere, support communities and provide food security.

But with so many tree planting schemes cropping up, it’s not always easy to spot genuine initiatives from ones that throw the seed on the ground and call it a day.

Thankfully, Treeapp makes ethical tree planting easier with its mobile app that lets you plant trees around the world - and amazingly, it’s free.

We spoke to Treeapp about how it works, where it plants the trees and crucially, what happens to the trees once they’re planted.

How does Treeapp work?

TA: Treeapp is a mobile app that enables anyone to plant a tree for free, every day, in less than a minute.

The way this works is users choose a location across the world where they want to plant a tree, watch a 1-minute ad from one of our sustainable brand partners and in exchange, this brand will fund the planting of a tree for the user.

You can even shop from these sustainable brands directly from Treeapp!

How is it different from other tree planting companies?

TA: It's important to note that we operate differently from usual planting organisations.

We focus strongly on monitoring our tree planting activities. It's very easy to throw a seed into the ground and just forget about it.

A tree must be cared for, long after it has been planted.

This is why we have academic experts in tropical forestry who work hard to ensure we are planting the right species, in the right places, at the right time during the year.

Read 9 Ways You Can Plant More Trees This Year

What can users find/explore on the app?

TA: Users can discover and shop from sustainable brands all the while planting trees: they discover eco-friendly products through our ads and can shop via our Marketplace.

They can also track how much of their carbon footprint has been offset by using the app.

Finally, users can subscribe to plant additional trees on a monthly basis.

Where and how do you plant trees?

TA: Our planting sites are spread across 12 countries, in Africa, Asia and South America.

We plant in the areas that need it the most and have been the most impacted by the effects of deforestation.

We look at the planting site and assess what tree planting capacity it has, what are the right species, what is the right spacing between the trees, or even when is the best time to plant these specific trees.

Through geolocation and sampling, we are able to locate and calculate the number of trees planted in a specific location; and most importantly, this confirms the success of the planting season!

What kind of trees are you planting?

TA: We support biodiverse projects with at least 15+ tree species per site in order to restore entire ecosystems.

Planting fruit and nut species helps local communities to cherish their trees and harvest the yield each year.

Flowering trees attract wildlife from nearby regions, regenerating areas at a faster pace.

How do you keep track of how the trees are doing?

TA: We monitor the growth of the trees through regular catch-ups with our local tree-planters who update us on each site's developments.

Photo, video and drone footage inform us on the growth of our saplings and trees.

We also have regular calls with our forestry experts in order to follow up on planting seasons, current activities and planting site expansions.

Why is it important to plant trees in general, and not just when offsetting a flight or similar?

TA: By planting trees every day we can increase carbon capture, revitalise species and provide social and economic benefits to local communities.

Trees can help us slow climate change, but they won’t reverse it on their own.

Measuring and reducing our carbon footprint is essential to slow the rise in global temperatures and should be done alongside offsetting schemes.

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How many trees have you planted and what's your tree-planting goal?

TA: At Treeapp, we are proud to have supported the planting of over 750,000 trees.

Our mission is to become the leading sustainable platform enabling anyone to have an impact every day.

And our first step in reaching that goal is to plant 1 million trees a day.

What was your a-ha moment that led to Treeapp?

TA: To have an impact, we decided to plant trees but quickly noticed we didn’t have the means: the passion to act was there, but the time, money and know-how was lacking.

So we came up with Treeapp - a free, mobile and easy way to have an environmental, social and economic impact directly from your phone.

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What are your other green tips apart from planting trees?

TA: We think it's important for everyone to understand how they can take climate action.

The best is to start your journey with changes that you’re comfortable with. Think about what you’re good at and the aspect of climate change you want to tackle.

There are so many ways you could protect the planet - you need to find your own way to create impactful change!

Download Treeapp for free on iOS and Android. Available in the UK and Ireland.