What do you do when carbon offsetting is off-putting? Plant trees for travel

Do you trust travel & tour­ism-related car­bon off­set schemes? Nico Nich­olas and his part­ner Elkie did­n’t, which is why they did some research and foun­ded Trees4Travel. In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Mr Nich­olas shares who and what inspired them. 

As an entre­pren­eur­i­al couple, Elkie and I have spent our work­ing lives trav­el­ling the globe. We have cre­ated com­pan­ies span­ning travel, fash­ion, and even the drinks industry, but no mat­ter how far you fly, you can­not escape your conscience. 

How many of us have passed over the ‘off­set your trip’ box on a flight book­ing because we simply have no idea, and there­fore no con­fid­ence, in how it works? Even worse, how many hor­ror stor­ies have we heard about mono­cul­ture forests planted in the name of car­bon off­sets that have not only replaced more com­plex eco­sys­tems but have also been har­ves­ted the moment they mature? 

Whatever the cause, off­set­ting can be off-putting. 

Elkie did some research. As she explored deep­er into the impact of our travel choices, it became evid­ent to her that some­thing needed to be done. An art­icle in The Guard­i­an about the pion­eer­ing work being under­taken by Tom Crowth­er at ETH Zürich, plus what she learned about the Tril­lion Tree Cam­paign, star­ted us down a new (flight) path.

Cal­cu­la­tions by the Crowth­er Lab estim­ate that there are 900 mil­lion hec­tares of tree­less land across the plan­et cap­able of accom­mod­at­ing 1.2 tril­lion nat­ive tree sap­lings, without impact­ing on exist­ing agri­cul­tur­al or urb­an areas. That land area is almost the equi­val­ent land­mass of the USA. The Crowth­er Lab’s Restor pro­gramme will bring togeth­er respons­ible plant­ing pro­jects from across the world under one mon­it­or­ing umbrella. 

The United Nations-backed Tril­lion Tree Cam­paign aims to restore biod­iversity below the can­opy and suck up tril­lions of tons of atmo­spher­ic car­bon in the pro­cess. Our pro­ject, along with Tril­lion Tree, is part of the World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s efforts to accel­er­ate nature-based solu­tions (con­serving and restor­ing 1 tril­lion trees by 2030), and form a cross-industry alli­ance of com­pan­ies com­mit­ted to forest lead­er­ship and impact.

Inspired by all this, Elkie and I co-foun­ded Trees4Travel out of the need we saw for a car­bon off­set scheme that could be eas­ily under­stood, and was simple, tan­gible, trust­worthy, and afford­able for the trav­el­ler. Being ‘tech­ies’ we were inclined to cre­ate a simple dash­board inter­face that would allow a trav­el­ler to cal­cu­late the num­ber of trees required to off­set a trip, provide a simple way to pur­chase the trees (for the price of a cup of cof­fee), and offer the abil­ity to fol­low the sap­lings’ pro­gress; watch the car­bon ‘bal­ance’ fall.

From the start we were determ­ined to only work with pro­jects that we could get to know and trust and that we could mon­it­or. That’s why we begin our odys­sey in Scot­land at the Talla & Gameshope wood­land res­tor­a­tion pro­ject, and at Wil­li­ams Lake in Brit­ish Columbia, Canada to replant a forest area dev­ast­ated by a wild­fire in 2017. These are the first forests we will focus on. How­ever, we are affil­i­ated with pro­jects across the plan­et, mean­ing lar­ger plant­ers may select forests in line with where they live or their areas of oper­a­tion. Big organ­isa­tions may even take on an entire pro­ject in their name. 

All the refor­est­a­tion pro­jects we work with state the num­ber of trees they require in order to com­plete the pro­ject. For fur­ther inform­a­tion, or to cre­ate a car­bon off­set account with Trees4Travel, please vis­it our web­site.

What do you think? Share a short anec­dote or com­ment below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Forest. Image (CC0) sup­plied by author.

About the author

Nico Nich­olas is a seri­al entre­pren­eur with a head for tech and a green heart. Hav­ing cre­ated and sold com­pan­ies in many dis­par­ate sec­tors he has turned his tal­ents to ‘put­ting some­thing back’ … Or rather tak­ing some­thing out, with a new com­pany ded­ic­ated to the “eth­ic­al off­set of car­bon in the travel industry”. Along with eco-war­ri­or wife Elkie, Nico has built the new plat­form Trees4Travel to help trav­el­lers cal­cu­late their emis­sions and plant bio-diverse trees.