A subscription service that works to fund climate action
Followers of Inhabitat primarily represent a population of eco-minded citizens who are working to lower their carbon footprint. Even with that, you might wonder if anything in your daily life is actually making a difference in the fight against climate change. Enter Ecologi, a subscription service that allows you to calculate your carbon footprint and offset it with a monthly donation that funds dozens of climate-resistant projects around the world.
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Ecologi is managed by a small team of environmentalists in the United Kingdom who are passionate about doing the right things for the planet. However, they were frustrated by not being able to make a measurable impact in their individual lives. In response, they developed a service that makes it easy to estimate your household or business footprint.
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How does Ecologi work?
From there, you can choose a subscription plan, starting at $10.50 per month. At this level, Ecologi through partners will plant 12 trees, which equates to 5.5 tons of sequestered CO2 annually. Individuals can also double or quadruple those efforts, plus contribute an additional $1.20 to support tree planting in the U.S.
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You can calculate a family household impact, including the pets, to create a clearer image of your carbon contribution, and the offsets to match. The system is also equipped to aid businesses who want to address their role in the climate crisis.
The mission of the company is multi-faceted and includes educating customers, funding conservation and carbon-cutting efforts and investing in renewable energy. The umbrella goal is quite simple — Ecologi summarizes, “The aim is to reduce half of the world’s emissions by 2040.”
How does a subscription service contribute to the environment?
Ecologi participates in a wide variety of projects aimed at sequestering carbon and reducing carbon release. Since 2019, the company has planted over 42.5 million trees and offset 1.9 million tons of carbon. That’s an impressive blanket statement, but the steps to achieve that are small and calculated throughout myriad regions and addressing a host of different issues.
For example, one project is working to provide 500,000 fuel-efficient cookstoves as a replacement for inefficient models that burn a large amount of wood and coal. With 90% of the country depending on biomass as their primary form of fuel, the goal is to significantly reduce the natural resources consumed, and the air pollution currently produced, to do the same job.
Other projects involve developing solar power arrays in Vietnam, Egypt and India. Similarly, investments in wind power are bringing clean and renewable energy to areas in the same countries of Vietnam and India, as well as Thailand, Brazil, Honduras, Mexico and South Africa.
Next, battling deforestation is a huge project in a world rapidly clearing space for agriculture and urban development. As a result, Ecologi is working against this devastation in Democratic Republic of Congo, Bolivia, the Western Amazon and Brazil.
Additionally, the organization is feverishly planting additional trees as a primary defense against global warming. Where the damage has been done, Ecologi is targeting reforestation projects in Tanzania, Kenya, Ecuador, Argentine, Peru, Morocco and Uganda, among others.
Other projects aim to help the planet in other ways. Some examples include reducing waste in India by using cast-off rice husks to produce energy and converting wastewater from distilleries into biogas and digestate (a nutrient-rich fertilizer) in Thailand.
What else is Ecologi striving for?
With so many projects to choose from, subscribers to Ecologi can make a verifiable impact towards helping the environment. That’s the goal of the company and transparency is an essential part of the equation. Inasmuch, it proudly and predominantly displays progress reports throughout the website.
The blog outlines ways the company is making a difference, including information about becoming a certified B corp and subsequently earning a B Impact score of 123.7 (compared to the average 80). It also empowers other companies to seek net-zero status with a clearly-outlined plan to get there.
The projects page describes dozens of efforts to meet the goals of the company and subscribers. On their about page, readers can identify exactly how much money has been collected through subscribers and how every dollar of that money has been spent. It includes receipts as evidence of tree planting and displays reports for carbon reduction.
The idea behind Ecologi isn’t new. It’s about collective action. Together we can make a much larger impact than we can as individuals. The format, however, makes it easy to participate and track individual contributions, as well as follow the cumulative effect of the current and growing nearly 40,000 members that have joined the campaign.