This Black Friday weekend, millions of shoppers will be purchasing products online, but imagine if online shopping could do some good. TreeClicks is doing just that by planting trees for every online purchase made through its partnered stores.
If you already shop at places like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Macy’s, eBay, Best Buy, and more, you could use the free TreeClicks Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox plugin to make your purchases count. For every purchase made through one of TreeClicks’ 50,000 store partnerships, the company will plant a tree.
TreeClicks receives a fee for bringing you in as a customer to its partnered shops, and with that, the company uses a majority of that revenue to plant trees.
TreeClicks creator Jelle Bekirovic’s background in energy and sustainability led him to try to solve the issue that consumerism poses to the environment. He said that in the midst of mass consumption, especially holiday shopping, shoppers can feel like they are giving back in some way by using the plugin.
“It’s best to consume less or not at all, but the trend is currently that we are only consuming more and in the U.S., e-commerce is already 500 billion dollars, so if a percentage of that can put into tree planting we can make an impact,” he said.
Since Bekirovic started TreeClicks in August, 50 trees have been planted, but he said that he anticipates the spike in online shopping this upcoming weekend will expand the company’s tree-planting efforts.
“We started to plant trees in the eastern part of India,” he said. “We are exploring the possibility for us to support projects where there’s even more deforestation like in Indonesia or Brazil.”
Of course, by purchasing products in general, it is not exactly great for the environment given the CO2 emissions from trucks distributing the products and plastic packaging. However, Bekirovic said that there are sustainable ways you can shop this holiday season.
“We can’t deny that consumerism has an impact, but trying to purchase second-hand products, refurbished electronics, or vintage fashion are ways you can shop more sustainably.”
Bekirovic also said that you could choose to purchase from brands on TreeClicks that use sustainable practices and give back. He suggests looking at Rank a Brand to find brands that align with sustainability.
Aside from online shopping, you can also plant trees by switching up your search engine. Ecosia.org is a search engine that plants about one tree for every 40 to 50 searches on average. The site sees about 71 million searches per week. In total, Ecosia has planted over 65 million trees throughout the world since the company started back in 2009, focusing primarily on the Amazon rainforest area of Brazil.
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