Demonstrating its commitment to delivering lasting change and going way beyond offsetting its entire carbon footprint Fountain Partnership LTD (Fountain) – a global digital marketing agency based in Norwich and Canada – has announced its pledge to plant one million trees by 2025 and fund the world’s best climate crisis solutions through its partnership with Ecologi. This pledge means Fountain will not only cover its own entire carbon footprint but of around 29 other service businesses of similar size too in the next five years.
Described as a ‘Netflix subscription for the planet’, the innovative subscription service Ecologi allows everyone to go ‘Climate Positive’ and take real action against climate change. Each month the non-profit organisation plants millions of trees around the world in partnership with The Eden Restoration Projects, investing the money into projects where local people in developing countries are paid to plant these trees and remove greenhouse gasses.
Marcus Hemsley, Co-Founder and Director of Fountain, comments: “Given the devastating reality of the global climate crisis, we need to go way beyond eliminating our carbon footprint to cover the footprints of others. Most people understand the need to stop putting greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, what many seem to be unaware of is even if we stop emitting today, we need to draw down billions of tonnes of C02 to avert catastrophic climate change. Rather than waiting for governments to act, I believe businesses need to make commitments to draw down significantly more C02 than their people have emitted.”
“Choosing to support a non-profit organisation such as Ecologi – a cause that resonates both personally and professionally – was an extremely natural decision. It presents a unique opportunity for Fountain to demonstrate our long-term commitment to making a real, tangible difference by drawing down our carbon footprint, and the footprints of over 1,000 other people. Not only that but all the projects are completely transparent meaning we can see the positive effect our contributions are having on our planet.”
In three months, Fountain is sitting sixth on Ecologi’s global business members leaderboard having planted over 50,000 trees, which will absorb 615 tonnes of carbon a year. In addition to planting trees, the projects Fountain is also supporting through Ecologi include preserving 186,000 hectares of Bazlian rainforest and providing 100 MQ of affordable wind energy to Andhra Pradesh state, India.
“It’s now common knowledge that one of the best tools to tackle the climate crisis and keep the world’s temperatures from rising above 1.5c is to plant trees. They are also crucial to preventing ecological collapse,” says {insert name and position at Ecologi). “We are so grateful to Fountain, and all our business partners, who are choosing Ecologi to offset their CO2 contribution and contributing positively to our planet. Our mission is to cover ¾ of the global carbon footprint, and to do that we need individuals and businesses, like Fountain, setting ambitious goals such as planting over 1 million trees.”
To help achieve its pledge of planting one million trees by 2025, Fountain will be donating a percentage of its turnover per quarter. Marcus adds the decision to partner with Ecologi presents an important statement to the overall business community on how more needs to be done to offset carbon footprints:
“When it comes to preventing ecological – and consequently societal – collapse, there’s only two games in town: stop dumping C02 in the atmosphere, and draw down what we’ve collectively put up there. Given the short term challenges so many people are facing with the pandemic and the recession, I believe it falls to business leaders to take a stand. This decade is make or break for us with climate change, we all need to think bigger than just making profit.”