Treedom: from game to reality
Treedom was founded in 2010 by a startup developed in Florence by two friends, Federico Garcea and Tommaso Speroni. The inspiration comes from Farmville, a game in which each user can create his own virtual farm: Treedom makes it possible to create entire forests from the screen of a computer or a cell phone, with the difference that the trees are really planted. In ten years of activity, explains Laura, Content Manager of the company, "they have created a real forest in 14 countries around the world, from Italy to Africa, from Latin America to Asia, through a web platform that allows you to plant trees at a distance in projects of environmental and social sustainability."
Today Treedom has more than 5000 collaborations with both Italian and international companies. Each Treedom tree has an online page, is geolocated and photographed, can be kept or given virtually.
The need for sustainability
In recent years, people's awareness about the climate crisis has grown exponentially. As a result, consumers are paying attention not only to the quality of the product, but also to the sustainability of its production. "Attention to environmental issues has never been higher, thanks to the bottom-up activism that came from Greta and the Fridays for Future movement, but also thanks to the 2030 agenda launched in 2015 by the United Nations, which defined the Sustainable Development Goals." In this context Treedom pursues 10 of the 17 SDGs set by member states: "The projects that we choose to support must therefore always be able to bring both environmental benefits (such as Life on Land and Climate Action), but also social benefits (such as Zero Hunger, No Poverty and Gender Equality)".
Involving local communities
Treedoom plants its trees in 14 different countries, involving more than 70,000 farmers around the world. The first objective, with more than 1,190,000 trees planted, is to absorb as much CO2 as possible, but the impact on local communities is also of vital importance for the development of the project: "Involving local communities is fundamental because making our trees profitable is the best guarantee of longevity that we can offer them. This also means offering farmers an alternative to practices that are as harmful to the environment as they are risky for their livelihoods." For this reason, explains Laura, "Treedom projects aim to have a positive impact not only on the environment in which they intervene, but also on the people who inhabit it". This is why Treedom focuses particularly on developing areas, where "the benefits of trees can really make a difference". To achieve this goal and have the greatest positive impact possible, "Treedom offers [farmers, ed.] specific training on the management of fruit trees, forestry and the most common diseases to which the species they take care of are subject".
Nature and technology
Treedom firmly believes that "the development in the digital world does not compete with the preservation of the real one". On the contrary, technology "is a tool," and as such neither good nor bad, it all depends on the use you decide to make of it. In the case of Treedom, for example, "The digital experience of the Tree Diary allows those who guard Treedom trees to feel part of the project, and be proud to have contributed to it." Thus, we talk about "technology enabling a greener world." Technology is also involved to rely on a system that is completely transparent: "for us at Treedom it was essential, from our first steps, to build a traceability system that would guarantee the transparency of our forestry projects." To achieve this, each tree is geotagged and photographed. Whoever plants a tree through the platform could one day go and see it in person. This operation is anything but simple: "geotagging and photographing one by one the trees we plant is certainly one of the most complex aspects, if you think that to date Treedom has planted nearly 2 million trees it is not difficult to imagine how much time and energy this step requires, which is done directly by the farmers involved. The effort and commitment are always rewarded: "the greatest satisfaction is to see grow year after year not only our trees, but also the number of tree keepers in our community."
Morocolor has been working with Treedom since 2019 and has three forests to its name, the FIRST, the MOROCOLOR and the latest addition, the Green Hope, for a total of 575 trees in 7 different countries and 130,350 kg of Co2 absorbed.
