#Teamtrees: A Wasted Opportunity

The environment and how to reduce the effects of CO2 is a hot-button topic. Some people believe that global warming is fake while the people who believe in it, take it to the other extreme. They will argue that we need “De-growth” and to setback living standards by fifty-years.

The majority believe correctly that climate change is real. The difference is that they are looking to make many minor changes to reduce their carbon foot-print by a sizeable amount.

This is where we come to #TeamTrees. Started on the 25th October 2019 by MrBeast and Mark Rober, which was a campaign to raise donations to plant 20 million trees.

As the stated cost of each tree was $1, Team Trees had to raise $20m. The goal of the campaign was to have this money raised by the end of that year. A goal that would be reached on the 19th of December, twelve days early.

The success of the campaign was from many content creators on YouTube.

Those “YouTubers” created videos that promoted it by talking about the positive impact that planting trees could have.

This helped Team Trees to reach mainstream popularity. This also meant that Team Trees had positive PR, leading to YouTube itself offering to match up to $1m in donations.

A wasted opportunity

As wonderful as Team Trees was in idea, it was a wasted opportunity.

The problem is that the $22.5m raised could have gone much further. We have African countries like Madagascar which have lost up to 90% of its forests.

One of the biggest charity in this area is the Eden Reforestation Projects. They are a charity who have 443 million trees world-wide, with 375 million of them planted in Madagascar.

The big difference between Team Trees and Eden Reforestation Projects is cost. For Eden, it costs 10 cents per tree planted, ten times cheaper than Team Trees.

Therefore, I say that Team Trees is a wasted opportunity. As instead of planting 20 million trees, the same money could instead have planted over 200 million. This includes Mangrove reforestation, the best type of tree for carbon storage.

If you want to help the environment in the form of tree planting. Instead of donating to Team Trees, donate to the Eden Reforestation Projects.

Published: 11th January 2021