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Ecosia, the company backing TreeCard, has a search engine that plants trees. Ecosia has claimed to have planted 116M trees. Several environmentalists have com
by Nbox9 6y ago
Ecosia, the company backing TreeCard, has a search engine that plants trees. Ecosia has claimed to have planted 116M trees. Several environmentalists have come out in support of the product — and specifically in support of the way Ecosia uses partners to plant trees on Ecosia’s behalf and the way Ecosia keeps their partners accountable.
I personally will have a hard time saying good-bye to my credit card rewards. However I think the wooden card might have a viral aspect because people will want to comment on how unique the design is. This looks like another great product by Ecosia, and I hope that they continue to make competitive products that plant trees.
It’s also worth noting that while planting trees is very good for the environment, it is not a silver bullet against climate change.
Previous hacker news discussion about Ecosia. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19324766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19324766
- klyrs 6y ago> It’s also worth noting that while planting trees is very good for the environment, it is not a silver bullet against climate change. Not buying things is better for the environment. Projects like this are brimming with good intention but are little better than salve for consumer guilt.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoYeah but objecting to every attempt to do good because, it doesn't go far enough! Is a recipe for doing nothing.
- klyrs 6y agoA card that leaks crude oil on every purchase would be more effective (if ridiculous from an engineering/logistical perspective) -- salves for consumer guilt aren't merely not doing enough, they're enabling the behavior that's doing the most harm.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThis credit card doesn't enable anything that wasn't already enabled. That argument is similar to 'what-about-ism' where irrelevant objections about another subject are injected as if they follow from the premise.
- gajomi 6y agoI can imagine a variant of this card that tries to tackle the point you bring up. Not all purchases are equal. Some of them have negative carbon footprints. The tree planting offsets the footprint for every purchase. These things are not easy to estimate exactly but since there are probably order of magnitude differences in carbon footprints for different products there should be useful information about the relative impact of a purchase to display to the consumer and to demonstrate the overall impact of the project.
- glaugh 6y agoThis feels very clever to me. I think people have very wrong senses of how bad various actions are for carbon footprint. I know folks who don’t eat meat for CO2 reasons (which I’m fine with) but fly across the US all the time—-sorry citation needed and happy to be corrected but I did this math once and it was roughly one year of meat = one (round?)trip. A side-benefit, in my view, is to show that actually offsetting carbon footprints isn’t terribly expensive (for people who have the disposable income to fly across the country), which I think counters the “We’d have to shut down the economy to stop global warming” misconception that I believe a lot of people have (citation also needed here, just personal experience) The Indulgences That Actually Work Card (in the sense of old Catholic indulgences), you could call it :)
- darawk 6y agoHow exactly would a card that leaks crude oil be more effective? Leaking crude oil is terrible for the environment. Planting trees is good for it.
- klyrs 6y agoIt's a thought experiment, analogous to Tullock's Spike [1]. The idea is to modify incentives, by putting environmental impact at the forefront of a consumer's mind, by making them actually handle the mess that the card produces (thereby making them reluctant to make purchases). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock%27s_spike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock%27s_spike
- snarfy 6y agoWhat are we supposed to do? Live in trees? Build everything ourselves from raw resources we mined with our own hands? If you want any kind of advancement in civilization you need commerce.
- Nbox9 6y agoProcessing a transaction might be a carbon negative interaction with this company. That is a noteworthy innovation.
- Bud 6y agoDo you need to be such a judgmental scold? People need to pay rent. People need to buy food. People need to pay for all kinds of things that don't really constitute the kind of acquisitive consumerism that you're trying to criticize.
- klyrs 6y ago> Do you need to be such a judgmental scold? Is the personal attack called for here?
- knutwannheden 6y agoVery well said! It appears like the other commenters deliberately try to misinterpret you. Consuming less is indeed one of the best things we can do. Instead of buying new cheap clothes all the time to be trendy we should buy quality clothing and wear it for a long time. Repair it (and other things we buy) or sell it or give it away rather than dispose of. Here in Europe things are moving in the right direction, but still too slowly, I am afraid.
- cglace 6y agoI think people get tired of everyone bashing every initiative that doesn’t solve every problem that exists. If someone can plant trees with their grocery purchases instead of gaining points to purchase flights I think it’s a net win.