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Where are my trees?

When you fund tree planting through Ecologi, you’re supporting a range of incredible reforestation and ecosystem restoration projects. Ecologi’s method of distributing the funding we receive means the positive impact of our community is being felt all around the world. In this blog we’re going to shed some light on exactly how your money is spread across the projects we support, and why we’ve chosen to do it this way.
First things first, if you fund UK, US, Australia or Brazil trees, the projects linked with these trees on your profile are exactly where those trees will be (or, in the case of UK trees, have already been) planted. 
For all the other trees funded by the Ecologi community, we have a slightly different system. Due to the projects we support having varying costs associated with them (depending on geographic location, types of tree planted, price of land etc), we combine trees from all core* projects into one funding pot. When you buy a tree from this pot, you are randomly assigned one of these trees, and this is what appears on your profile.

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Ecologi’s method of distributing trees allows us to fund a range of different types of reforestation and ecosystem restoration projects. The benefits of spreading our funding across all these projects include:
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">More affordable prices</li>
</ul>
We want everyone to be able to play their part in protecting our planet, regardless of their budget. Ecologi’s system for grouping trees from different projects into one funding pot means we’re able to offer a price per tree that is affordable for everyone. Together, we’re able to fund projects all over the world at a variety of price-points, meaning the positive impact of your money is felt in many more communities than it may otherwise have been. 
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Supporting projects and communities all over the world</li>
</ul>
There are so many wonderful reforestation and ecosystem restoration projects out there that bring unique sets of benefits to local people, biodiversity, and our planet. As a member of the Ecologi community, you are part of the solution for getting vital funding to all the projects that need and deserve it most. From mangrove projects in Madagascar providing important habitat for terrestrial and marine species and protecting communities from coastal flooding, to forest restoration projects in the high Andes providing water security for millions of people and helping to support vulnerable species such as Spectacled Bears and Andean Condors, your money goes a long way, in more ways than one!
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Less risk</li>
</ul>
Supporting a variety of projects means that trees funded by the Ecologi community are at less risk. While every project we fund goes through our rigorous risk assessment process, and we ensure that every necessary action is taken to protect the trees, when you’re working with nature there is always some risk. By spreading the trees we fund across many sites around the world we are helping to minimise the threat of natural hazards. For example, if we were only funding one project and a fire swept through the site, a large proportion of the trees we had funded would likely be damaged or killed. However, by spreading the trees we’re funding across many sites, we’re ensuring that, should such an event occur, it would only impact a small proportion of the trees funded by the Ecologi community.

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We have tried to make the trees in our community members’ profiles representative of the way in which the trees we’re funding are actually distributed around the world. 
While the process of allocating trees to profiles is randomised, trees from certain projects are more likely to be selected and allocated to your profile than others, simply because there are more of them in the pot. This is why you’ll see trees on your profile associated with one of the projects in Madagascar, Mozambique, and Kenya fairly often, but very occasionally you’ll spot one associated with smaller projects such as those in Peru, Morocco, or Senegal for example.
While the trees from different projects do vary in price, they are all planted and nurtured by wonderful organisations with whom we are proud to work. You can learn more about these organisations in our blog post <a href="https://x.ecologi.com/articles/blog/get-to-know-our-reforestation-partners">here</a>. No matter which trees are randomly assigned to your profile, you can be sure that they are part of fantastic initiatives that have been hand-selected by us for the amazing benefits they are bringing to local people, local wildlife, and our planet. 
So, when it comes to the breakdown of projects at the top of your profile, the numbers show the total number of trees from each project that have been allocated to your profile. When the trees on everyone’s profiles are combined, the number of trees assigned to each project will total the number of trees we, collectively, have actually funded in each project.
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*Our core tree planting projects are where the majority of the trees that we fund are planted, in countries including Madagascar, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda, Peru, and Morocco. For a full list of our core planting sites and more information about the projects we support, please visit <a href="https://x.ecologi.com/projects">ecologi.com/projects</a>.

Ready to make a difference for our planet? Get in touch, and let’s chat about how we can help you on your climate journey. 

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UK Voluntary Carbon Market Guide: Best Practices for Climate Action

The voluntary carbon market plays an important role in corporate climate strategies – but its effectiveness relies on buyers doing due diligence and rigorous quality assessment on each project, as well as placing the purchase of credits in the right place in the climate journey.
To ensure meaningful climate impact, businesses must develop a comprehensive carbon strategy and find ways to fund only high-quality credits in the voluntary carbon market – and this guide shows you how to do so with Ecologi.

<h2>Table of contents</h2>
<ul>
<li>When to buy carbon credits</li>
<li>Our new carbon projects assessment framework</li>
<li>Ecologi&#8217;s core due diligence principles</li>
<li>How Ecologi scores and ranks carbon credit projects</li>
<li>Questions to ask your carbon credit supplier</li>
<li>Take action in the voluntary carbon market</li>
</ul>

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<h2>When should businesses buy carbon credits in the voluntary market?</h2>
Businesses must not use credits in place of making direct, measurable reductions in their emissions. Instead, follow these steps to ensure you buy your carbon credits on the right step of your corporate climate action journey, and in the right way:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Measure your emissions first – to allow you to understand where your business’s emissions are coming from. 
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Set science-based targets and work towards them – set ambitious targets aligned with the SBTi and compatible with the global 1.5ºC warming target.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Beyond value chain mitigation (BVCM) – design your BVCM portfolio to work alongside your decarbonisation plan and address your unabated emissions in each reporting year. Align it with SBTi guidance and the Oxford Principles. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Buy high-quality carbon credits – use this guide to ensure the carbon credits you buy meet rigorous quality standards. Remember, under the SBTi framework you’ll also need permanent carbon removal credits for neutralising your residual emissions when you reach your net-zero date.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Disclose and report transparently – publicly disclose information about your carbon credit purchases, and clearly communicate the limited role of carbon credits in your broader sustainability strategy.</li>
</ol>

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<h2>Ecologi&#8217;s carbon project assessment framework</h2>
In April 2025, we published a report summarising how we assess carbon credit projects against our rigorous proprietary rubric. A snapshot of what goes into our carbon credit project assessment is below, or you <a href="https://cms-assets.offset.earth/app/uploads/20250428124112/Ecologi_Whitepaper_A4.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">download the full whitepaper here</a>.

<h2>Carbon project due diligence: Ecologi’s core principles</h2>
At Ecologi, we maintain general due diligence principles which we apply universally across the voluntary carbon market, to support our efforts to supply only high-quality carbon credits.
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">ICROA-endorsed standards only – we supply credits exclusively from carbon standards which are ICROA-endorsed.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Responsive to ICVCM decisions – we support the ICVCM’s two-tick approach to providing CCP-Approval to project methodologies, and we go further still, to assess individual projects on their merits and limitations as well.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Keep the carbon credit life cycle as short as possible – 75% of our credits in 2024 came directly from project developers and their nominated dispensaries (as opposed to intermediaries on the secondary market), maximising the proportion of purchase price which goes to the developer.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Locally-appropriate projects only – we take care to ensure that supported projects are being applied in appropriate geographies, where they can have the greatest impact.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Deep project-level scrutiny – our extensive assessment criteria are specific to each type of project, and we assess every project against these criteria, ensuring the project’s specifics have been taken into account.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Methodological consensus – we synthesise data we receive from our partners Sylvera, BeZero Carbon, Calyx Global and Renoster) with our own in-house analysis to uncover where there is consensus about project quality, and improve confidence.</li>
</ul>

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<h2>How to evaluate carbon credits: Ecologi&#8217;s scoring methodology</h2>
We designed a three-layer assessment process which takes into account the merits and limitations of the carbon standard used, the carbon credit methodology used, and of the individual project design.
The tables below summarise some of the data inputs we use at each stage.

<h3>Assessment level: Carbon Standard</h3>
Examples: Gold Standard, Verra, Puro Earth, Isometric, Plan Vivo.

<h3>Assessment level: Methodology (or ‘Protocol’)</h3>
Examples: GS TPDDTEC, VM0048, ACM0002.

<h3>Assessment level: Project</h3>
Examples: GS 10790, VCS 1571.

Criteria in the assessment are categorised as either quality criteria or risk criteria, and are segmented by our three pillars of impact: Climate, Nature and People. Based on how it meets each criterion, the project gains points for quality criteria, and loses points for excess risk – ultimately giving a risk-adjusted value out of 100 for each of these pillars.
Having gathered our risk-adjusted pillar scores, we use our own unique scoring formula which weights the risk-adjusted Climate score of the project equally with the combined risk-adjusted Nature and People scores. The formula then produces an ‘overall’ score (also out of 100) for the project. In order to be supplied by Ecologi, projects must meet a minimum overall score of 80, and must achieve no lower than 65 in any given risk-adjusted pillar score.

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<h2>Key questions to ask carbon credit suppliers</h2>
Selecting the right carbon credit provider is important to help guide you to make informed choices as part of your corporate sustainability strategy. Before purchasing carbon credits, businesses should ask:
<h3>Project quality </h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you assess/validate/underwrite project quality? If so, how?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do your projects get good ratings from the ratings agencies? If so, what ratings are they?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you source credits directly from project developers, or from the secondary market?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you monitor projects over time to ensure continued success, and how do you remedy it, if a project&#8217;s quality drops?</li>
</ul>
<h3>Due diligence</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you ensure you are supporting the right projects in the right locations?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you account for project permanence and mitigate risks?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">What makes your projects additional?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you assess the project&#8217;s impacts on climate, nature and people?</li>
</ul>
<h3>Positioning</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you contribute to the development of a high integrity voluntary carbon market?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you align your portfolios with the Oxford Principles? If so, how?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you reflect ICVCM guidance on carbon credit methodologies and technologies?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you build multi-year portfolios that align to mid- &amp; long-term SBTs?</li>
</ul>
As the voluntary carbon market evolves, corporate buyers have the power and the responsibility to demand high-impact credits to drive real climate progress. This means buyers have a responsibility to do due diligence before placing an order for carbon credits.

<h2>Take action in the voluntary carbon market</h2>
As a business committed to corporate climate action, understanding the voluntary carbon market is essential for making informed decisions about carbon credits. Our comprehensive whitepaper provides deeper insights into creating an effective sustainability strategy.
<a href="https://cms-assets.offset.earth/app/uploads/20250428124112/Ecologi_Whitepaper_A4.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download our full whitepaper</a> to learn how your business can navigate the voluntary carbon market with confidence.

<h2>Connect with one of our climate experts</h2>
Please complete our form to arrange a 30-minute discovery call to discuss your goals and get a tailored solution for your business.

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