Questions? We got answers!
About Carbonii
Make climate action easy, accessible and engaging. This is the core of Carbonii. We are two very imperfect eco-conscious founders. This is precisely who we wanted to reach and what we needed to tackle. It is not made easy enough for people to learn, educate themselves and engage in climate action.
We identified the three pillars noted above (Easy, Accessible, Engaging) mainly because current solutions are only addressing one or two of them. Our view is that we can’t (realistically) expect people to significantly change their habits and therefore reduce their environmental footprint without all three. In an ideal world, all of us would understand that this is about survival, not pushing an agenda, but in the era of misinformation, negation and opposing views, not enough people are currently part of the solution.
- Easy. This is key and perhaps controversial, but making climate action easy is the first step to engage more people. We often don’t like change, but when starting slowly, we eventually get used to it and understand the benefits. Think of starting to exercise! Painful and hard at first, but then so rewarding and second nature. What we ask here is the equivalent of a small daily walk!
- Accessible. As in free. We understand that not everyone can afford to spend more (or any) money to participate in climate action. We think you should still have the opportunity to do so. If you can spare a few minutes per day for the planet, we’ll gladly plant trees for free on your behalf.
- Engaging. This is often the missing link. Easy is great, free even better, but we need everyone to feel engaged, to enjoy the journey. We’re building Carbonii to be a great content platform where you’ll love learning and consuming sustainability related articles, posts, videos, etc. while knowing that you have a direct impact on the planet.
At this time, we are only planting trees as a free incentive. We also offer a paid optional subscription for you to offset your entire carbon footprint on top of the tree planting initiative.
For most of us, tree planting alone isn’t enough to offset our entire footprint, and since carbon offsetting has been around for quite some time, we saw an opportunity to offer it to our users within Carbonii. Whether you are on our free account or elect to pay, the platform itself and features remain the same. Your impact on the environment is the real difference with the latter.
General
This is probably the question we get ask the most. Who exactly plant trees?
We’d love to say it was us with our own hands and shovels, but unfortunately, we don’t have that talent! However, our great partners and leaders in the space do. We rely on them to plant trees on behalf of our users. They have projects all over the world, making it easy for us to track, measure and report on the efforts of our audience. Our main partner is Eden, you can learn more about them and the projects they support here: www.edenprojects.org
Our goal is to make climate action as easy, accessible and engaging as possible. We think that cost is often a deterrent to engage in a meaningful way. Therefore, we built the core of the platform as free to use for individuals. We generate revenue from a couple different streams:
- Advertising. We carefully select the brands we allow on the platform to prevent greenwashing. We don’t want to be pushy and match as best we can the ads to the content you are consuming on Carbonii.
- Sponsored Content. Slightly different than ads. You might come across sponsored articles, videos, posts and more from some of our partners and brands. Again we want those to be informative and factual.
- Paid subscription. We don’t force anyone to do so, but apart from tree planting, our users can elect to pay to offset their entire carbon footprint. As a start-up, the money we make from this stream allows us to reinvest in the platform, namely in the freemium model.
Tree planting initiatives aren’t new. And although far from being a perfect solution, they have proven useful to attract the eyes of the general public. It’s easy for anyone to visualize and understand the value of a tree, constantly removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. We are choosing trees for two main reasons:
- Cost. Given the free nature of Carbonii, we needed a climate incentive that had a significant impact at a manageable cost. Trees are allowing that. We can test and scale our model with them and eventually move on to other projects.
- Trusted. Trees are planted by recognized and vetted organizations, ensuring a positive impact on the environment, but also on the communities surrounding their projects. This is making a difference for our planet, entire populations and ultimately, all of us.
In itself, tree planting isn’t enough though. This is why it is merely the added incentive. As mentioned previously, our main goal is to share valuable environmental content to help individuals reduce their footprint at the source. This is our core offering, an educative content platform amplifying your impact from the very start of your journey.
We are not. It would be near impossible to apply our business model as a not-for-profit organization. We are however reinvesting the vast majority (actually 100% at this time) or our revenue into Carbonii. We are also planning to share our financial documents publicly to ensure full transparency and allow our users to understand what we do with the money we generate.
We do not accept donations and as such, can’t provide tax/charity receipts for any transaction happening on Carbonii.
If you wish to support us further, you can do so by opting to offset your annual carbon footprint with us through our monthly subscription.