The Problem: We need to plant trees to avert the catastrophic consequences of climate change, but there is not enough money available.
The Solution: Allow people to convert their Nectar Points into trees.
The simplest, proven way to take carbon out of the atmosphere and help to avoid the consequences of climate change is to plant trees. However, there remains a dearth of funding for tree-planting, and for charitable causes in general.
Finding a way to plant trees that costs people nothing can help address that problem. Some initiatives already exist such as the Ecosia search engine, which uses revenues from advertising to plant trees.
As a nectar card holder myself, I suggest Nectar points should be added to the list (along with a range of other, similar schemes).
Accruing points to gain discounts on purchases is useful and can help to save money, but it also offers a chance for those points to be used as donations; the savings are often not that high, and people have made purchases already, so the points do not affect the price of those purchases.
Enabling people to use their reward points to fund tree-planting would be a free (or at least inexpensive) way for them to plant trees and help the fight against climate change and would also improve the corporate image of companies involved and help attract more customers.
Over 15 million people have nectar cards in the UK; if each person donated just £1.50 of their nectar points to the scheme each year, that would plant over 100 million trees a year, and more than a billion over the course of the next decade.
The above statistic also shows that some nectar points could still be spent on discounts; it would not have to be mandatory to plant trees. But giving people the choice and enabling them to track how many trees they have planted and see inspiring videos about the work they are funding would give them a good-feeling and help to show people how we can win the fight against climate change.
With reports of the fires in the Amazon this summer and the public outcry this has caused, it is a prescient time; I wonder how much would be raised if an appeal was launched to donate nectar points to a Save the Amazon fund? I imagine a lot…
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