Userlutions against climate change: We plant more than 100,000 trees

In recent months, the Corona pandemic has eclipsed one of the most important issues of the day: The fight against climate change.

In order to still reach the 1.5 degree target, everyone must make a contribution. In practice, this is often not so easy, because CO2 is emitted practically through the use of all products and services.

We believe that every company shares responsibility for defeating the climate crisis.

And so we asked ourselves what we can all do, each of us individually and we as a company, to achieve this goal. For one quarter, a team of us worked on the topic of sustainability and brought about small and large changes. For example, we have switched to renewable energies for our electricity supplier, we do not fly short distances and take the train instead, we offer our employees vegan food, we consistently recycle…

While all of these measures make sense, they still felt like drops in the bucket to us. We asked ourselves, how can we use targeted measures to have an even greater impact?

Effective altruism – in line with our working philosophy

In our search for an answer to the question of what we can do as a company, we came across the approach of “Effective altruism”, which fits in very well with our overall company philosophy.

An efficient and pragmatic approach is important to us – both in our working methods and in our RapidUsertests tool, as well as when it comes to sustainability. We always ask ourselves “How can the most positive impact be made with the most optimal use of resources?”

And so we found in Plant for the Planet an NGO whose goal is to plant or conserve as many trees & forests as possible at the lowest possible cost, and which accordingly works very efficiently. We have decided to support the Eden Reforestation Projects through Plant for the Planet.

Planting trees is one of the most efficient solutions to pull the harmful greenhouse gas CO2 out of the atmosphere. This is most effective in the global south, where trees grow up to four times faster and thus bind more CO2.

With its employ-to-plant methodology, the project we support also promotes local communities through secure jobs, thereby counteracting deforestation. With a permanent job, local people can finance their lives without having to clear forests for building and heating materials or agriculture.

Reforestation creates healthy forests that eliminate the harmful effects of deforestation, such as flooding, erosion and desertification.

We have decided to plant at least 100,000 trees this year. This corresponds to about half of the Berlin Tiergarten.

In addition, we give our customers the opportunity to increase this number further. For every tester booked with RapidUsertests we plant 5 more trees.

If a small company like Userlutions can plant 100,000 trees a year, how many trees could a large company plant?