Ever since I started Treehoo.com I’ve been thinking about the possibility to make a blog, not an easy task when you´re working full time and studying part time. But now with the beginning of a new year and the great promises it brings with it, I´ll try to make a good effort at it.
“Why a web portal that plants trees?” people have asked me. The easiest answer is “Why not?”. But the most correct answer is “Because we need it!”. All statistics we posses show that the levels of CO2 are increasing and that temperatures are rising as a consequence, with terrible results to be foreseen.
Trees are the best cure against CO2 and I believe that we really need more of them. Of course there are other projects that plant trees, but they all depend on givers and most people can´t afford to give so much whatever the cause. At the same time billions of people use the Internet each day to search for facts and information or just for the fun of “surfing”. This surfing by these billions of persons worldwide is giving revenues so big, that the greatest fortunes today are in the hands of those that offer services attached to the net. Treehoo.com is of course very far from competing with those enterprises, but even a small bit of these revenues invested in our environment could be of great benefit for the human race (and all other species to).
The idea behind Treehoo.com might seem a bit naive, but as incredible as it might seem it works! People from all over the world are surfing to the page on a daily basis, many of them send us e-mails to ask about our project and to congratulate us for the initiative. We are very greatfull for all these users and for their care for the environment and their trust on us. We do however need many more surfers that get to know about us and visit us, because the more people that uses Treehoo.com the more money is collected and subsequently the more trees will be planted.
Where are the trees to be planted then? For the moment it seems that we are going to plant trees in two countries to begin with, Sweden and Uruguay. They have been chosen for practical reasons as Treehoo.com is based in Sweden and we have some relevant contacts in Uruguay. The idea is to begin to plant the first trees in natural parks in collaboration with some schools . This way schoolchildren can plant the trees and learn about the environment and the importance of conserving it. For the moment and according to the amount of money we are making each month this seems to be the best solution. The idea behind the page is however to plant trees on a more “industrial” scale in the future, we are however not there yet.
What about the other 30%? Well, the idea is to make Treehoo.com a competitive web portal/search engine and to do so one has to invest a lot. For the moment the page is relatively simple and all services offered are so called “affiliate programs”, but someday we would like to offer are our own services so even more money can go to to benefit the planet. A site that want´s to be known has also to invest in publicity (just imagine the amount of publicity that was needed before the phrase “Google it” was invented). To do all this we would need to employ people and make big investments.
Finally, will 2009 be a better year for the environment? This is very hard to say, but there are some good indicators. One of them is the new U.S. administration, it´s hard to think that they will be worse than the predecessors. If the new president takes the environment seriously it could also trigger a greater conciseness worldwide. I trust however that with more and more people getting conscious about this issue every day, politicians will have to rethink their policies and that 2009 will be an important year for us who care about our wonderful planet.
Pedro
