How it works

In Grow For It we use the figures from the Statistic Office at EU, which we think make the best sense. The latest annual emission average for a person, in this case a Dane, was 8.8 tons in 2017.

This figure include Denmark’s emissions of other greenhouse gases. For the sake of comparability, the greenhouse effect from the other greenhouse gases is converted to the effect that the other gases would have if CO₂ were involved. In this way we reach a higher average emission number per day per Dane than the isolated average for CO₂ emissions. This fits well with Grow For It’s thinking because we have to clean up the atmosphere by reducing the effect of all greenhouse gases.

We choose partners with great care. Currently our trees are planted abroad by:

• American Eden Reforestation Project, who plants mangroves for us in Madagascar. See Eden’s FAQ list.
  Danish Forestry Extension (Forestry’s foreign branch) which plants for us in Uganda, Vietnam and Nepal.

We monitor all our plantings and if something happens to a site due to any kind of negligent protection, our local planting partners are obligated to re-plant.

A few years back in Uganda, the trees in one our sites actually did get eaten by goats. The trees were duly re-established by our local partner and better sapling protection put in place.

In a longer perspective however, we have to be realistic and acknowledge that sooner or later some of our plantings will perish from causes ranging from extreme drought, natural disasters or war.

For the same reason we are looking to establish a broader range of planting regions, preferably diversifying into regions with a high degree of stability in order to mitigate the long term risk of tree losses.

sWe think it is important that everyone should be able to contribute to tree planting and not just those who can afford our 1000 euro lifelong zero carbon donation.

When you choose to offset your personal CO₂ emmission for one year or give someone one of our gift cards, we initiate a small planting for 30 euro or the amount equal to your donation.

For our gift card donations we try to buy plantings within a low price range but with a high capacity to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Ideally we buy mangrove plantings in Madagascar from our  partner organization Eden Reforestation Projects (great FAQ at Eden’s website).

This is how we calculate the gift cards:

• The average CO₂ emmission from a Dane is just under 9 tons per year.
• The price for a mangrove planting able to capture 9 tons CO₂ per year is around 500 euro.
• Since a gift card donation is substantially smaller it will take a number of years for the mangrove plantet from a gift card to capture 9 tons CO₂. It will eventually do so, it will just take more time.

Another thing about our gift card donations: In order to get maximum CO₂ capture capacity for the smaller donations, we cannot maintain the same detailed photo documentation as we are able to offer for some of our lifelong carbon neutral donations.

For gift card donations we are able to provide documentation showing the area of the planting (like in this example).

With our 1000 euro donations we are often able to provide photo documentation for the actual trees plantet and the donor can travel out to the location and pat his or her trees.

Yes, if you are a Danish taxpayer. Grow For It is officially approved to receive tax refundable donations.

A forest does not die as it grows old, it merely looses some of its ability to capture and store carbon dioxide. It has long been assumed that very old forests are roughly in balance with their CO₂-budget. Every year some carbon is re-introduced to the atmosphere as dead wood rots, and a roughly equal amount of carbon is captured yearly in new growth, even in old forests.

However, new research estimates that old forests actually have an average carbon capture capacity of 6 tons CO₂ per hectare, which is phenomenally good news.

In the meantime: Your trees will easily capture and store 10 tons CO₂ per hectare for decades to come, thus buying mankind valuable extra time to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. We need that extra time.