Offset Earth gives you a simple way to fund the world's best climate crisis solutions and reforest the planet and they do this at a much-reduced cost than by using technology.
On this episode recorded on the 9th of April 2020. I spoke with Elliot Coad one of the co founders off Offset.Earth.
Elliott has spent over 10 years leading engineering and product teams before setting up offset.earth in 2019. Offset.earth gives you a simple way to fund the world's best climate crisis solutions and reforest the planet. I'm actually on offset.earth subscriber. I've been using them since about January 2020 to offset my personal carbon impact. They plant trees and buy offsets on my behalf, you can even gift trees to people. In fact, if you wants to gift me some trees, you can visit my profile page at offset.earth/jawache and click the gift trees button.
Eliot is a wonderful warm individual. We spoke at length about a number of topics, including the business of carbon offsetting and how they are managing to do it at a much reduced price, the historical challenges of offsetting and the future opportunities. We also spoke about trees and why they are specifically planting mangrove trees, as well as Elliot's background on the founding of offset.earth.
Speaker 2: On this episode recorded on the ninth of April 2020. I spoke with Eliot Coed one of the co founders of Offset Earth. Elliott has spent over 10 years leading engineering and product teams before setting up Offset Earth in 2019. Offset Earth gives you a simple way to fund the world's best climate crisis solutions and reforest the planet. I'm actually on Offset Earth Subscriber. I've been using them since about January 2020 to offset my personal carbon impact. They plant trees on by offsets on my behalf. You can even gift trees to people. In fact, if you wants to gift me some trees, you can visit my profile page at offset to dot earth forward slash jaw ache and click the gift. A tree button. Go ahead. It's okay out of my waiting. Eliot is a wonderful warm individual. We spoke at length about a number of topics, including the business of carbon offsetting aunt, how they are managing to do it at a much reduced price, the historical challenges off offsetting on the future opportunities. We also spoke about trees and why they are specifically planting mangrove trees, as well as Elliott's background on the founding offset. If you liked this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple podcasts, stitcher or your favorite podcast application. It really helps on our website of their climate fixed dot com. You'll find the show notes for this episode, including relevant links and information on You Can subscribe to our newsletter. Let's dive straight in. Hi, Elliot. What is the climate problem that you're solving?
Speaker 1: I assume thanks to give me the invite to be here. The problem is solving Is that off? Very personal problem. That's how things start off of a lot of projects. But it's a problem that a lot of people are feeling. There are roughly 4.5 1,000,000,000 people on this planet who know about man made climate change, very concerned about it. But when they look at their way of contributing, they think of recycling. Or they think about their diet plant based diet flying less all those sorts of things. But for a few people. For a lot of people involved, they already were recycling a lot. They may have already switched to vegetarian. They might already not be flying much because I'm not that wealthy enough to deal all the time. And they find themselves inching towards a climate catastrophe and looking at their contribution and going. Is that all? I've really been lto contribute. So we want to be ableto supercharge the billions of people who are who fall in this kind of very concerned camp to able to get everyone to be able to contribute just on another level.
Speaker 2: And that's amazing. I love how you mentioned that not everybody can afford to fly and these one of things that's mentioned all the time, and it's kind of very egalitarian approach that you've got here right now, which I love. So how is offset Earth helping to solve this?
Speaker 1: So is the basic idea that actually money can be used for good on, and we they say they things armfuls off how you're normally minding your own carbon footprint, where you're lopping off 1/2 a ton here, 0.1 of a ton here of your co two footprint what you can. That's a slow grind everyone should be doing on a long term basis. We need to de carbon eyes and live a sustainable future. But we're not able to do it like we're no ability to make those changes fast enough. So what the opportunity is something that is totally under reported is the idea that there are all these climate solutions out there that if we put money behind them, they will buy us a lot of time on. There's a lot of research that points to it could almost single handedly get us out of this pickle. So ah, our with officer is the core concept that many individual small contributions. Ah, well, really, I don't. So what does that actually mean? So we're a subscription service. So, like Netflix or Spotify Aspirational E. It's extremely easy to kind of get it set up and running on DA, depending on your kind of personality type. Like we're saying, we're flying a lot vs not much at all. You offset your entire carbon footprint, not just flying, but everything. Onda. We take a very conservative look at your carbon footprint, so includes a lot of things that others don't include Onda and then you. It's being offset by funding the world's best. Climate solutions on our backbone is always planting some trees. We don't you know there are other projects types that we support, like renewable energy, energy efficiency projects, but back pioneers, reforestation and so 12 trees among get planted in your virtual forest on DA. That is something that we really bring to life, and it's a really reason to keep on coming back and keep on chipping away at contributing to work is becoming quite a massive impact. I've been on my own platform for a year, and my goodness, there's generally hundreds of trees because of my £4.50. That's that I've been popping away each month and then for businesses were, um, we're selling a similar problem, but it's kind of on a bigger scale for businesses where the old only alternative for businesses well, the only real solution for businesses is to become carbon neutral. You have to be certified, you have to bring in an independent auditor, and it's a long journey, and it's not something that many size businesses can get. Hold off. It's a big investment, and so you wanted this kind of self service sustainability program that is suitable for any business of any size. And so that's the client positive workforce, which is based on your employees, their employees and have entire lives. Offset includes all the business travel on DSO. There's a lot going for the business, but it was a massive staff pack. So you join this business and you got a gym membership. But also your entire life is offset by all these trees. There's a real big deal, Um, on it's It's like £4 a month per employee. For the business side, we've got 500 businesses on on this program since October last year, Um, a car like 7000 climb positive individuals on the kind of individual subscription families and pets included client positive pets, too.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. And I think just Teoh mention for the audience. I am actually an offset Earth customer myself. I do love every new jumped over. But if the virtual forest, which I think is a really great idea, Andi, I'm surprised that how motivated it makes me to continue my subscription. But essentially, it's a wall where I see every single tree they got planted, All might be half and all the work that you've done. And I even see the trees growing, which is subtle. Psychological impact was I'll just let you know right now. Definitely works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, on those individual trees were So if you tap on any of these in individual trees, we borrowed a bit from the crypto world, which trees given, like a little idea. And it's all relates toe projects in a time stamp that they were planted and geo location for, ah, eyeing up the kind of the next level of data that we have access to. And we're gonna go to kind of bring that impact even closer as a real big problem or trying to fix where a lot of car competitors or others who you know when you get received donations, we want to not just have a dilator bill. Pdf of kind of your evidence of what happened. But to bring it closer to the impact of making, you know have, like, a photos and videos from the planting site and interviews with those who planting the actual trees, and you had to closing the gap on the actual impact it So unless virtual on more, more really?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I must nothing how it feels. So you mentioned businesses, and that's interesting because I am a retail customer of officer. If I don't see the business side of your product, talk to me about that. So if I'm a business and I want to become carbon mutual, I contact Officer Earth. And what do I tell you? What's that conversation look like?
Speaker 1: Yes, so carbon neutral is a is a bigger strategy, the kind of net zero strategy or something you try and define and work towards over a course of years on. But it's a way of essentially looking your own carbon footprint within the business, on working out where the kind of emissions of based and you have to bring in someone external into the the kind of the auditing and foot printing. Um, it's ah, it's a brilliant process, and it's improving. It used to be really difficult, but the tooling out there is getting better. And so the clippers. The workforce is the instant first few rungs on the ladder that gets impact happening today rather than waiting for in three years when they found out your entire supply chain and all sorts of things. It's so no impact starts today. Onda weaken essentially loop in these kind of experts over the course. Like for those who want to go beyond the client positive workforce, then we can fold in. Is consultants to kind of certify you? Um, so it's it's a bigger process. No. Ah, a lot of businesses initially loved the idea but aren't really following up on it on. But there's something that we need to try and help along the way. Really kind of. You know, this really good start, but we have to go a lot further with all that businesses and every anyone involved. And yes, it is. It is a bit of a journey, really. So the crumples to workforce is a big deal. We're also we now have this kind of Shopify up where we're now launched, where any of the one million Trop, if I APs can now add the impact any of their actual retail. So sending a T shirt or whatever service you can bake that in. And there's lots of different areas where ah, we're essentially planting trees. So yeah, fruits from recently we planted Ah, so I've been going for about a year and we have planted a 1,000,000,000 1/2 trees on dumb. Soon were, you know, could see on the spreadsheets where it is not too far away. That would be doing that every single month on your the master master and keep on ticking by says a really fantastic opportunity. But it's finding all those different routes and channels of ways that we can work with business. I can, working with events and working with, um, I know for the travel industry, they've got a lot to kind of balance out with that kind of missions that they have. Um, yes, there's there's lost, different areas that we're working with And then also it's all about partnerships. So we're small were essentially just a collaboration of people on were not deep pocketed, so we work with brands to kind of standing on the shoulders of their kind of social sway. So, you know, for your partner with them, then they can use that multi 1,000,000 subscriber list to help get our names out there. We're essentially planting or forest for them, but the impact comes through worse, and so that's how? That's a bit of our model as well.
Speaker 2: I see. So you are helping businesses on the wrong. I like the idea of the on the rung to becoming carbon neutrals. They may just come to you initially, helps him have a carbon impact. Has to have a completely measured all of the impact from their firm, but they know they'll have some still come to you. I've never actually really considered that you are a stepping stone. You are a lead for them onto that journey of becoming fully carbon neutral. Carbon negative on that net. Zero. How we wanna
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, all of the above. Definitely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, no. Basically, everyone, all businesses don't know their carbon footprints like bar a theme. My by bother, Riel Minority. And so a lot of businesses know how many employees work within their organization. And so that's the thing that can get them over the line. And then one of the more unusual aspects off business model is how can you offset something that you can't precisely calculate? But that's been our kind of the force all along. Really Well, look, we're not going for precision and absolutism. We're going for a simplicity and on the opportunity, improving your ability to make action today so well, we're not able to measure on a pair employees basis. But the data that is that does really work for us is data from on a national level. So national level reporting off a carbon footprint is really well understood. Um and so we combine all that data. So if you're a country, you know, sign up in Singapore, you'll have a very specific carbon footprint on. We'll use the law of averages based on that data. And then what's interesting is that the carbon footprint from that that are the carbon footprint emissions will only have been generated within, Let's say, Singapore, but a lot of a lot of things that purchased are very important. So, you know, imported from Turkey, imported from Greece, etcetera. And so we add and no hold another data set on top of that to include all the imported embedded emissions. And then we add another 20% just to be sure, and that gives us the kind of the most rigorous, biggest kind of carbon footprint. You know, there are a lot of others who think of a carbon footprint, especially in the UK, is being six tons of C two. No, it really isn't anywhere near that. You know, when you bake in or the impulse imported emissions, it becomes more than double that.
Speaker 2: Six million tonnes per year, I think is that that's the average that report UK.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Six tons per individual. Yeah, six times per individual. Um, and in a way, that's how are you? We're based in the UK How are UK? You know how our government is purporting that our emissions are really coming down that, you know, the emissions aren't happening in the UK anymore. We're importing while our steel importing a lot of embedded emissions. And so, ah, many of our competitors just look at this kind of individual view and think of a footprint being offset just like that. But what's really made in the UK anymore, and that's the same for a lot of countries. Uh, yes. So it's important that we bring in ALS. The data sets that we can because rivers is possible. But then that takes the burden off the individual. It takes the burden off the business to be auto make that impact. And it's the only self service sustainability program that's actually out there that you could just get going today. And if you wanted to drop us next month, and you could But you got all these trees in the ground Elson
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's my journey. I remember going into Officer as part of my work. I unfortunately travel quite a lot. Andi. I remember calculating all of my emissions and then figure out how many tons that Waas then offsetting that money. Tons. And then I found Officer Earth and it was like, Oh, just go in the make a plan. And I'm on the mega plan and you've calculated the average amount for somebody like me. And you've added on top of that, as you say, How much do you think we really are? How off you think the actual averages are? You've kind of added a lot onto there to make it more realistic. And near the end of the day, I think if no accurate, then I'm either paying a bit mawr than I renew toot offset. But because I don't care that much,
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's your wonderful customer. That's the perfect mindset. Exactly. Yes, the absolutism, like is difficult, especially. You are in the deaf world. And that's my background to is Ah, love my old colleagues going. Yeah, but I you know, I live on a boat and all sorts of things like I shouldn't have to is like the world's on fire, man. We just need all hands to the pump. Just frickin handover. Just coffees and coffee's worth of cash, you know, every week or every month.
Speaker 2: And it's not that much money as well. That's the thing. I think I was surprised when I first started looking into offsetting on how cheap it waas. Yeah, really? I think we're pricing carbon at quite a low rate, Really. And I'd love to discuss that with you a little bit more, but yeah, it's quite cheap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. On. Um, that's, you know, page one of Google right now. Or until up until we were, we had launched her. Um, it was about five times the amount of kind of cost price that actually should be. So we settle our carbon offsets is as cough cost price plus 12.5% on that is still four or five times cheaper than, Ah, a lot of the guys out there. There is funny how I mean that there are a lot of actual purpose driven competitors out there. They really are. But the prices just isn't reflected in that. On duh. We don't really know where it's going wrong, but there's a big margin. There is a big gap. So, um, love our businesses find sort of astonished that the price that we can access the carbon offsets at and so some people are just Some businesses are planting trees of its anymore. They just want a boat built by masses of carbon offsets. And they would just go to like a normal carbon trade, Delia. But they come to us instead because off just kind of this purpose and out our whole thing is just a volume game. We need to be able Teoh, see a lot of customers to make this worth it or to be able to sustain itself. But But the opportunity is this massive and so you can totally get there and paradoxically prioritizing impact over profit on transparency and authenticity. Those things which should kind of pushback a profitable business. I think paradoxically really helping us right now? Yes. Who is? Yes, it's me. Good. Has been, has been helpful for us. And Ah, yeah, offsetting your entire footprint is damn cheap. And that's what kicked off the whole thing. Jesus let you know. We know carbon offsets are infallible. System on project quality has come up in the past. But like, let's say most of the projects deliver what they say they're going to deliver then then, heck yes, it's with backing.
Speaker 2: So and I think that's what's interesting. A game for the audience members in officer. When I pay my subscription, you plant a number of trees, and I would like to dig into that little Biggs. I think there's some interesting stuff there about the types of trees that you plan on where you plant them, but that you also purchased offsets that are classified as Golestan. That I believe right, offsets. Andi, I wasn't aware I had noticed, actually seemed to be quite chief. So are you saying that they're cheaper because are you cutting out the middle man? Are you choosing not to make as much profit? Why are they cheap? A few on more expensive for others.
Speaker 1: Yes, so it is complicated. So we've carbon offsets as a kind of alluded to Has the had the world's rockiest history off anything ever with carbon offsets, the gold standard and a few others came around. If you as a cue to essentially solved the quality concern. So they really raised the bar off kind of the standards and the criteria of everything is exemplary. Onda and Gold standard sell their carbon offsets. And, uh, we do cut out a few off the middleman on, um, it's still an open marketplace. So when you, um with we have increasing demands, the prices will will correlate with it. But it's fair to say that if we can run things in a very horizontally scalable kind of autonomous way, like we are with our business, where there's no sales call is known any, none of that's involved whatsoever. Our ability to sell carbon offsets and then link those directly with the gold standards certificates that we get from their registry, no manual intervention at all. It means that we can We can almost run this as absolutely cost price. Essentially, um, we don't have that kind of profiteering aspect which can triple or 10. 10 x a carbon offset project selections of a big deal. So there are you can get. You can buy a ton of co two for maybe, uh, 50 pence on a ton like 50 cents on the time. Yeah. 00 or like $2050 on the ton. But it's a real extreme variation, and what we do is we combine those. We don't go that cheap often. There's maybe a small concern at that about riel bottom end. But they were. If they're certified by gold standard, that's that's what we go for. And so our due diligence concern is alleviated a bit, but we combine it with more inexpensive carbon offset project like just a massive wind turbine installation where the economies of scale they're a really favourable. So these sorts of projects don't need much external capital from the carbon offset market. Get the go ahead, whereas a lovely humanitarian project which restores water wells in Africa that were installed by a charity that fall into disrepair, that this project repairs them, which means that these local communities aren't having to boil lots of dirty water sources, which means I hold like this. So two emissions and dropping down a hot lead, less word etcetera. And these are other higher end of the spectrum. So we always combine a mixture of a blended portfolio. Essentially, Teoh keep that price down. But yeah, So it's an interesting industry on, I think, with with aviation when that kicks back off again because we're in the middle of, ah, lock down with coronavirus. Um, when that kicks back off again, uh, the whole aviation is gonna have to offset mandate as mandatory, So that's gonna have a lot more demand. But then supply will will come back, and there's gonna have this whole massive green economy of kind of mawr, amazing standards of carbon offsets and more colorful climate solutions that are out there for us to get behind.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. So it sounds like part of it is you just cutting up middle men, but also excitingly because I am an engineer as well. You've just automated the process, whereas perhaps a lot of other offsetting firms might have a lot more manual people in sales teams and things like that. You've automated it to the point where you even indicate just you could even probably do a cost, which is really good. And I like the way that you what you're doing a mixture of you're not just buying the cheapest offsets you making sure the money goes in a variety of places so they can hit all the different targets they have. The other thing that you do is you plant trees. I notice you plan mangrove physical mangrove trees. Yeah. Is that like a reason why you plant mangrove trees is I don't think I've ever seen a mango tree. Come on. It?
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, absolutely No. In there. Not in this kind of northern hemisphere, uh, temperate climates that we that I live in for sure. If this is ah, kind of this is a very tropical thing. But around island say, Ah, Indonesia and Madagascar And that kind of, ah, around those kind of latitudes that these Ah, these mangroves exist on the kind of the fringes of any islands or on the kind of the coastline. So this was a big part of the research and development before we kicked off the Actually, before we actually launched the project. We wanted ever like an exceptional amazing reforestation partner to work with reforesting is tricky. You might have seen the headlines life. One trillion trees can save the planet. And then a week later, that the another headline saying no one trillion trees can't save the planet on then it's kind of boils down to you. If you added a few milk, more words to the headline. It should be one trillion trees could save the planet if we did it well, on its that kind of the expertise and the geography. Is it anyways a big deal? Um, it's a long story short Why my in great trees, They, uh so that kind of error of the world. They grow very quickly. So a tropical rainforest grows exceptionally quickly about five times faster than our sort of trees in the UK, a tropical rainforest. But the mangroves they grow four times faster than a tropical rain forest. They're exceptional little growers on dumb. They Ah, this we're planting right now in Madagascar, which in the last 120 years has seen 90% deforestation. So Madagascar. There's a lot of room to plan a lot more mangrove trees, which is the upside of what we can do. We can really at scale reforest, um, these mangroves and they are amazing. Ecological ally. The tropical fish. I think 3/4 at least 3/4 of all tropical fish everywhere. Any tropical fish rely on planting that's night in nature. Rely on laying their eggs in mangrove roots without these routes, what yet without these routes there, unfortunately, absolutely useless
Speaker 2: because I mangrove tree. If I remember the pictures, it looks like it's growing out of water, and it looks like the I had to describe on the pod cars. It's like a na lee serve
Speaker 1: worse exactly in on the set of her. It's exactly that you can see that is exposed kind of nest very nicely. Maybe not miss beautiful, but you got the serene kind of water and lights. The habitat I've been below the surface is absolutely stunning, just kind of the aquatic kind of life that goes on there. So it's a really amazing project from both of climate and an ecological point of view to get behind. It's a community led reforestation project, so there are lots of partners taken, shoot, you know, trees into the ground using and drawing. But There's amazing off amazing opportunity for to engage a community and community engagement is a primary reason that they don't get caught. Don't get just chopped down again. So once the community engaged, then they've got love for it. They fall in love with it. They want to live off the land. They have the kind of local harvesting ability where this from fruiting you can economies that benefit from this. And yes, there's a big deal and a lot of people are being employed in the local area. I've never been paid for, have had a single paid days work ever. And so this sort of initiative is long term. It's like 3200 year investment. Ah, it's a big deal in there. It's Ah, it's an amazing project and that's all thanks to the partner eaten reforestation. They've got a really long track record of of doing it well and ah yeah, this is a really initiative to work with, and so we've planted enough mangrove trees now that we actually have our own bit of land but their own bit, it's like 2000 hectares, which is 6000 acres on your any just getting started as well
Speaker 2: if you bought that land or house that land,
Speaker 1: so we're essentially so it is designated to from off. So from Eden reforestation we've been able to designate it isn't in collaboration with the local governments. Their designated for us to plant exclusively on it means that Coca Cola's trees aren't mixed into our trees. And, you know, our subscribers need to CRE impact and say it's our actual area. And so we were gonna go visit. It might be a little delayed in the moment, but we're having just had some photos from the site. And it's so amazing to see him just a few months, hundreds of thousands off little saplings that are now sprouting leaves and they do grow down quick, and it's been great to share it with everyone. And for the love of these is done trees that were planting at scale.
Speaker 2: Seeing something grow from the land is quite a inspirational thing. I think it's summer time right now in the UK, and we're actually started toe plant stuff in our garden, and it is just a whole family getting not just seeing something grow is quite beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, love it love springtime? Yeah, And, uh, makes makes the world go around. And these kind of small scale ways of getting evolved have a big lasting effect. If you actually plan to a tree in your garden, if you if you can, then you feel just so connected to it. And if you especially for doing it for the reason of ecological and climate point of view. And then that kind of sits of you and then who knows what the next thing you ends up doing? Maybe it's like a volunteer tree planting day and like the local area, all sorts of things.
Speaker 2: So moving on, I think the question I'd like to ask now is how how does this scale? I'm how to get from where you are right now to the maximum potential impact off offset Earth?
Speaker 1: Yes. So the maximum potential impact is something been working very recently. We just launched this collective action idea. Uh, when you're planting 12 trees, 12 trees, 12 trees a month on, it's hard to work out What, that what role you're playing in the grand scheme of things. And we just we just launched this kind of campaign page where we can. We can really show how all these individual contributions really add up to cut a long story short in collaboration with this amazing research from this project called Project Project Drawdown. It's an amazing summary off the 80 odd established climate solutions that are out there, the capacity capacities that are out there. So, uh, it's very easy to see the solutions are out there. We just need to put money in their direction, Onda. And when you scale up something like this platform, you can very easily see the kind of milestones that lead up to it. It's amazing. Anyway, down the line we could be looking at the 700 million people were out there who have Internet access who have at least $10 disposable cash every month to get behind something like this, and it becomes 3/4 of the entire global greenhouse. Ah, footprint. It's It's absolutely astonishing. So how do we get there? So we're we're like a for profit company. We know we need to be of profitable enterprise to attract lots of investment and to scale very quickly. But other than that, we are essentially a collaborate, a collaboration off everyone who can come join the course. So we've got all sorts of people who are just joining Ah slack, who can put us in different places and partnerships. And like I saying with brand partnerships is A is a big opportunity to getting us out there very quickly. So it's a little of everything, but it's time is genuinely now. We have to move exceedingly quickly. And so it could be some strange partnerships that I come. Ah, that is one. There's this kind of really sustainable beer that is going over the, um this is really sustainable bear that's totally over delivering and kind of the world of how to make something and deliver something sustainable. We're doing a lot of work with them, and it's just gonna put us in lots of different new places that are kind of very tacky. Background wasn't able to so hopefully black political working with other projects, there's lots of very small early stage projects that need a little helping. So we're gonna be doing this Ah, Moonshot aspect off the subscription where for a little extra, you can essentially get behind these very early stage projects that, for example, a direct carbon capture eso stalking CEO to out there but also other really fantastic initiatives. I come so let's sack this amazing just very cheap kind of water sac that you can give to nations that in need of it off in need off clean access to water. You just fill it full of dirty water. Leave it out in the sun. This is crazy chemical treatment and then six hours later Nice. 8.9% of all kind of pathogens are kind of wiped out of this water on dumbed. It changes on a big scale for the communities involved there. But there's a whole lot less burning off kind of fuels that kind of, you know, essentially purify water. So backing these kind of very early stage projects is gonna really big opportunity for us as well. Kind of tap into something that we're gonna rely on in terms of the future, because I'm gonna need these projects. But also justice Another level of engagement kind, almost like brother Kickstarter for early stage projects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that that's really good. I have no idea that the potential impact was 3/4 off. All have gone on to the collective action website, and I will put this in the show notes as well. I love how you have just documented the journey along the way. This is what you need Teoh achieve or these the milestones you need to achieve Teoh Get to that because of all global Co two emissions. So what's the most significant risk to stop you from getting there? Is It's something signs, engineering. Is that market or is it or is it something else? What's the risk?
Speaker 1: The disengagement on its trust. So Ah, carbon offset has had this this terrible, rocky history. It's it's improving. Is it going to improve fast enough carbon offsets. Reason why we're wedded to this is carbon offsets are the vehicle of converting money into quantifiable carbon reduction. So we're in bed with this. We need to be able to We on the rest of those who were kind of selling climate solutions, needs to try and improve the picture, try improve the kind of authenticity of these projects, and so that's gonna be a bit of a journey, really. The no doubt there's a lot of capacity for a lot of these climate solutions and there's gonna be a lot of pull and push with supply and demand. But the green economy is gonna be absolutely major. Most jobs will be essentially servicing these climate solutions in the next few years. That's very exciting. So the technology technology product is is built. It's about being relevant and being on to talk to those who are on the fence who are maybe quite cynical. Oh, who just don't care enough for embedding this into their lives in a way, that is, is no. It is a very low friction way. So that that is it radius essentially a marketing problem on DA. That's with some my background, very tech, enthusiastic about environmental science for a long, long period of time. And then you're at this kind of marketing problem all of a sudden, and so that involves just completely different sets and kind of human psychology. And so, yeah, it's really in that world. How do how do we be big enough? Like, how do we seem like a trustworthy opportunity? How do we get there fast enough and loyal the all the kind of stepping states getting to that point? Onda Um, that's just gonna be. That's the journey, and that's that's the crucial problem. And so we're finding a lot of I'm finding a lot of my time in efforts on my cell phone, Google Page one of S CEO and kind of all the kind of classic hallmarks, or like the classic angles of kind of not normal business trying to sell itself, really. But instead of needing 1000 customers, we need, like, 700 million customers, and that is that's good, a phase a problem. Also, our margin is so small that if someone starts to talk to us on customer support, or if a business does that, that sort of time we it almost doesn't balance itself out. So we need a very kind of hands off system where that horizontal horizontal scale of bull system needs to be truly baked in from the outset so that we can welcome those hundreds of millions on board and, uh, that so the marketing for sure. Then in the short term, there's going to be getting access to all the right projects that a lot of projects out there on a lot of them are quite small scale, so that will come up onto the market, so to speak, and they'll come off the market and its ability again for us to do this like a really scalable manner. So I think that looks like a like a little mini marketplace for projects. So a project developers say I've got 10,000 tonnes or a 1,000,000 tons of CIA to that you can remove through coming through our project on just put him onto our system. We we look up, how they're certified and where the due diligence and reporting is that. And then we plug that in on. If you're in Australia, then no doubt you. We want to plant planting trees in Australia, not necessarily in Madagascar, on same for China. And if you're in Scotland and so being out to keep things keep impact local is a major win for us because it's on the tips of arrows tongues when they what of what they want are from kind of supporting the world. They know it's a big global problem, but their country is their home. Really Yes, who is a few a few aspects, and it's great problem to have on da Weaken. It's a good start but we got a brand that people really like and this affable. It's not like kind of the old age of environmental services. It's more kind of in the branded kind of lovely. More like headspace, then. Ah, our environmental consultancy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a user of head space as well, so I definitely feel that has a similar emotional connection. And it makes sense now to me, the features that you have an offset, which is the transparency, is the visibility do feel connected to the offsets that are bought with you. I almost feel that the pictures you showed me the pictures of my actual trees that are you know, it's not quite there yet, but it does feel that that kind of connection I've always want to ask this question, actually, and I'm gonna ask it to you cause you're involved in the kind of the offset markets, the buying of offsets. You understand that the nature of that world and you talked a little bit about how offsets can be bought. Different prices on somebody I used to be in the financial industry. I know as demand increases price increases, you use up, will you buy up all of the cheaper offsets. And then all that's left is the more expensive ones, the more expensive on some more expensive ones, the price rises and rises and rises. How do you see this going on in the world? And also, does this give a good indication to the price of carbon? Put that way? Is that Yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It is a big deal on. We have quite close partnership with a carbon trader has been doing it since. Pretty much the whole thing is kicked. Often has seen it has seen the kind of ebb and flow on DA It's there's a rule. There's a rial, huh? Yes. A. We've just like him. So with carbon pricing, we've So we were very closely with A with a carbon offset. Expert Essentially has been working with this since since carbon offsets came to fruition with the original Kyoto Protocol in 97 these I've had this kind of whistle stop tour of like the history and how it's common line and also really come off the boil. 2007 was a dark time. A lot of investigative journalism denouncing a lot of these projects are genuinely a sham on DA. Since then, there's always certifications which are improved things and say now demand is rapidly increasing. Aviation is gonna have demanded as a mandatory Oh, are enforced to be offsetting. And so we're going to really see riel short term spikes in in that price on DA. To a certain extent, we already buffer in this idea of price fluctuation. So, for example, rather than so we did just just two or three weeks ago where we have a little extra buffer off our kind of commitment. So when you sign up for a business signs up, then we make a minimum commitment off. How many off sexually by on your behalf and trees we plant on your behalf. But then we add a bit more, just in case of the kind of price fluctuations. Rather this having to every single week change their kind of the price. Dan user. And so over the last quarter or the last 3/4 story, we've had quite quite a big gap, which has meant that would be enough to not just line the back of our in line our back pockets with our own cash essentially built but in no issue a dividend, but we've been over to issue an impact dividend toe of our subscribers say, just the other week we issued this tree dividends. It's a carbon offsets were cheaper than we'd expected. And so we issued out 350,000 trees to be planted 115 each to all of our subscribers on. That was just our kind of way of giving back, but also is a way of us being kind of weather the storms of site, that kind of market price fluctuation. It's gonna be interesting. I think it's gonna be a 20% year on year increase, just Germany speaking, which is no as much as I was sort of fearing. But if it does happen, then we we have to adapt to it, and we have to essentially start paying what a riel price it won't. The price of a cop in the tongue is that the necessitates. Essentially, I'm also seeing a lot of efficiency is happening at the moment. So, for example, protecting a tropical rainforests in the Amazon, for example that used to be incredibly expensive, so you can sell these carbon offsets if you protect the Amazon. Then there's a whole lot less tons of Theo t entering the atmosphere. E atmosphere three slash and burn. Also, animal agriculture entering these lines, uh, safe can protect the land cheaper than these carbon offsets are gonna come down as well. So there's an amazing technology company called Nachama who do a lot of, uh, monitoring through micro satellite technology on DA computer vision to build up these amazing near real time. Ah, kind of maps off carbon not trees, but carbon in the ground. And that monitoring has taken alleviated a lot of the manual essentially tree counting that these consultants these NGOs were otherwise having to do so. There's a lot of interesting, very low cost solutions coming on the market as well. So yeah, I'm just as keen as you are to see how it's going to play out. But no doubt kind of the numbers are involved on the supply and demand side of things is just going to go through the absolute roof on, uh, sure is gonna be interesting. And the solutions themselves are gonna be more creative. What's gonna be a bit difficult is the certifications are going to take a little while to adjust to. Some of these new projects are coming out here, so imagine like it's Ah, an infrastructure project that is 10 years, 20 years in the making. Certification is slow as a lot of paperwork for the right reasons. And so it may mean that in the short term, we may have to be more open to all those types of the gold. Standard is convenient because it's lauded as being amazing and solves a lot of these problems. We might have to bring some of that kind of certificate certification aspect in House mawr. Due diligence. We have to bring in ah, bona fide climate scientists to do the work that calls gold standard we're doing on our behalf. And so then there's more readily available projects that are out there so
Speaker 2: that you could do the trooper as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yes, sort off. It's gonna be a really brilliant thing for us to be a lot closer to the inner machinations of the projects that we're getting behind. Uh, that's gonna be absolutely fantastic. This kind of awareness and especially as we get involved with more kind of early start early stage kind of Moonshot projects. Yeah, it's gonna be as going brilliant as gonna put us in los different directions. But the one thing we we just can't be afraid of getting behind the the higher risk areas, unfortunately, climate, there's no certainty it's impossible to save with any certainty that attorney see it. He's been removed. And in the science world that does great on with a lot of our potential customers. That would potentially great as well. But we know that some things won't deliver to the absolute expectations. But if we have a rule, diverse portfolio projects that we get behind of different stages, different levels, then that's the way we de risk it. And that's how we kind of be able to serve hundreds, thousands and millions of people to become client positive.
Speaker 2: And that's great. I, for one, don't mind my money going toe officer being used for more risky endeavors on, But I think the less time we have, the greater risks we need to take to achieve our goals. And I think that's what's the current Times are demanding.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, absolutely. ISS, yeah, consider about myself. It's pulling all the levers that we have access to right now, as in just today, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, to talk to a little bit about Officer Earth itself, at what stage you are, how many people are involved and what were even based that. Let's describe that to the audience.
Speaker 1: Yes, so ah, based in Bristol. So the in the UK next, Londoner Onda and one of my co founders is on a boat on a houseboat on the third co founder is my wife, Andi. We're currently sharing child minding duties on that has its own analyses of yes, a
Speaker 2: covert child minded.
Speaker 1: Yes, Exactly an hour ago, I was making a mud pie on. Now I'm talking to you. So it's a riel family life balance. My father in law is essentially our impact coordinator. It was essentially project managing all the accounting, a little bit of a family business. There's about 60 other people on our slack. Gonna make his group all kind of pitching into this. So we launched last year. So that's June 2000 and nine Teen we launched. We launched last year in June 2019 on DA Yes. So we've got 7.5 1000 climate positive individuals and 5.5 hundreds clam positive workforces. And that's Ah, really good start on. And that's just a case of just adding more zeroes onto the onto the back of it. As a czar, saying earlier. It's a case of marketing is the big problem and talking to a lot of project developers, that's a riel keen passion off off What my role is it finding just the exemplary projects They're out there. Just last week, we've secured investment, which is really a big deal. As I say, It's like a long journey for us to be able to pay a large team out of this with these small margins. But with investment, it means that weaken triple our team, which has a big implication for what we're doing and the planet in terms of the opportunity. So, yeah, I mean, in the middle of covert 19 being artistic, your that deal would feel very lucky. Ah, yes. So lots of really good changes are afoot on da Yeah, this with being in the middle of covert 19 it means that it's also kind of given eyes down, focus on the product. Our background is tech and so therefore is going to be Oh, yeah, we can see a big opportunity for integrations like I don't know, For example, is a pia that kind of way of integrating anything with everything we want to be there and just make funding climate solutions like an absolute doddle that, like many consumers, may not even know about the crime officer. Sorry, the after F platform or planting trees. That is just a way of kind of connecting all these disparate systems. And so there's a bit of, ah, engineer and dream at the moment for the next Ah, few weeks. Sure,
Speaker 2: yeah, And as an engineer, I do love. Whenever companies like yourself make the services available, the AP eyes or zap e a r I f t t or whatever service you want to use, I will death me. Think of 50 or 60 ideas how to use that. So you mentioned that your background being engineering could you speak a little bit more? What is your background on the background of your partners as well? And what inspired you? What was the spark to start this endeavor in the first place?
Speaker 1: Yes. So I've for 15 odd years been developer Web developer Full stack and then became the CTO and ahead of a product A term. When I was working in London, there was this media company I was leading in terms of the digital operation inside ons. Ah, it was good. My salary is being paid by ads. It was very, um it's very kind of It was very kind of media re world I was living and then always burning in the back of my head. Oh my God. The freaking climate emergency is is a whopper on DA just needing to scratch the itch. And so I scratched it maybe about two years ago on, um, just been working on this essentially since, but I just I've always been like, deeply concerned about the dying environment. It's one of actually, one of my first kind of adult conversations that I recall with my mom going to really, there's this kind of impending doom were walking towards, and Mom sent a high bones. Always, there's always been issues that we've always faced in. We've always got every every generation has talked about this being like some sort of issue to face and eso. It's been a real thing to think. I need to get behind. And it's been great to marry the two because I could see ah, a real opportunity that June last year there were no services to directly find climate change solutions. Nothing kind affable other than like a down is difficult at the end of it. Um, affable, as in kind of maybe engaging and like a real reason to do something. So that was the whole opportunity on. And that was with me and my wife. You know, her background was, ah, kind of digital design. Met through a previous job on DA Yeah, off the same sort of background, and it's just scratched as well. Then, um ah daughter just turned up on the scene, maybe like a year before that. And she was an absolute little poppet. But also nightmare on DA. We were just sort it out. I can I can extra half day from my boss, just like 4.5 days a week. Not five. Did it. 4.5 days. Me and the missus just go and go mountain biking or go for a walk or just literally sit on the sofa and we're just talking about, uh, pretend the potential opportunity here and then conversely, rather than giving ourselves more time off, we managed to fill that half day immediately and then more with ultimate doing two jobs at once. Andi. It was basically a year ago that Ah, me and my wife just kind of went to this cafe and realized that this is where it was like floods of tears going out, how they were heckling. The these two jobs are in Daughter. It's just so difficult and going while re doing this and having been out a breakthrough. And she grew up a little bit more and that we were just able to make it work and be able to go full time. Start paying. And there's just a few planets aligned. A lot of that is about this idea, proper collaboration and volunteer people volunteering. Their time meant that we could just keep on going that bit further and ah yeah, it was very close, for sure. It was definitely quite close. Teoh just being one. He's kind of little side hustles when I say Side Hustle already would have been just the world's worst side hustle as well. Without any health
Speaker 2: like the side house lovers take you four times longer than your day job. Yeah, I've had their side arsenals. All that's amazing. So I think you alluded to something there, which I talk about quite often, which is that this is hard. Like what we do is hard and trying to solve it is hard. You sound like you've got some help there with it, with a number of volunteers as well. But this is a tough problem that we're solving. Andi. Sometimes we get help. Sometimes we don't, and it's hard sometimes to stay motivated. You've managed to stay motivated long enough, toe build a success out of this. What's your secret? How just they motivated every day, especially through the tough times.
Speaker 1: This it's the kind of is the working with purpose, isn't it? Is that kind of that drive on? And this the up until this point, the kind of the idea of UK anxiety definitely resonated with me on Is that when you're not engaged when you're no and we're not being out, really contribute is ah is hearts and then you put yourself in a position where you feel like you're part of the solution on and and everything that comes with it, and it's a it's a big it's a big deal. And, you know, about a year ago we were like, Could we plant a 1,000,000 trees through this and that Working Imagine that we would be absolute success and ah, it just seemed so unrealistic, especially with the aforementioned told that kicking around my around my ankles at the time and now it's onward to the kind of the next kind of I don't like a 1,000,000,000 is now the thing to kind of aim for what that is absolutely serious and this idea that it kind of just building this legacy and also the idea that often it's just this. Our mission really isn't that that's the thing that gets you motivated, and that's the That's the hard part from for me is in an ideal world. The last year we would have seen a lot more lineups on our platform. We would of ah, few of those things that we tried maybe didn't work out, and on reflection that was it was the right time to do the experimentation and kind of like what works. And is this a right area to invest? Time on? Uh, you know, a year is actually ah, on perfection. You have been, you know, done quite a lot of things. And it can feel quite frustrating how slow things are moving. But then you kind of maybe took take a little look back every now and against on this absolutely fantastic and seeing where just kind of the positive vibes. And, for example, on Twitter, every now and again, we got this family plan where you sign up the parents and the kids and the pet to Stephen Onda and have someone saying that their that their child, former age, I get the impression, like seven or eight just every week asks that Dad, can I see how are Forrest is getting on and they kind of like gather around and tap, funnel the different trees, And it's just that it's just lovely. And I think the world needs a lot of inspiration and kind of to feel helpful. Rather than help lessen. I'm imagining a lot of ass. Subscribers are starting to feel that much more helpful at the moment, and that's a frickin brilliant thing. Toe have going on at the moon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, As one of your subscribers, I can definitely say that I also click around my forest every now and again to see stuff. And I also remember getting toe did mention it before. Why? Also we're getting the tree dividends, so thank you very much for that. You see that you're already as, ah, a big clump of trees. It's cool. So just one last question. Is there something you read recently? A person our listeners should follow a thought you've had and ask from, And I think to our listeners that you want to share before we leave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I've been I've been really into natural climate solutions. Really? That's my back on by that. That's reforestation. That's anus. All sorts of kind of nerdy permutations of using peat land, which is this kind of heavy clay murders. Anyway, um, what comes with that is kind of the opportunity for ecological restoration and re wilding on. I've just been reading an amazing set of books. So if anyone's sort of interested but wanted to kind of be a bit more interest that this two amazing books, The Hidden Life of Trees on Ah Wilding. Both a little separate. The hidden life A trees is done, right? Just George dropping the an incredible like the the thing, the intricacies and peculiarities of trees and how they communicate. There is this idea of the Wood Wide Web, where they actually kind of communicate through this through this kind of bacterial network with it sends signals and all sorts of things. But every pitch is a real page turner, even for kind of absolutely uninitiated. And we've wilding. This is real love for nature in this opportunity, just actually fantastic. It's become a bit of a hobby. So if anyone's after a new hobby to kind of get behind in a real patients, that that kind of theme and then similarly we've just partnered with a very early stage projects here in the Southwest of the UK called CO Forest. And, uh, it's great for a start, Credit a k and in coming up this year. So around November December 2000 and 20 they're going to be planting their first trees, and it's just the idea that we can co create new forests on earth, will be supporting it, but what they what they have is that this is kind of amazing blueprint for this essentially all open source model of acquiring land. So that's all or the kind of illegals The contract on the kind of the ecological point of view is important and essentially creating a kind of almost ah, what's the word? Not deregulated, but these
Speaker 2: in a forest in a box. Sounds like you just get everything you need to create a forest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Ah, what's it was Bitcoin where it's kind of d structural get where it's d. Oh, uh, yeah. Just yes. So that's distributed. Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, So So it took about care for us again. Yeah, and similarly, there's this amazing first project called co Forest that's just happening in the southwest of the UK on Dumb were really enthusiastic about this as well, because it's they're What they're doing is not just helping plant a lot of trees and different areas, but they're essentially kind of white labeling, creating this kind of distributed model for anyone to essentially get hold of land, which is often bad land, which you can't essentially do much wear of its on degraded land, which is no good for farming. So if you're in an area of rare, it may be quite rural or no, and you just want to essentially get behind and access these grants. You can have all sorts of support, but you could be responsible for your own little forest and whatever corner of the world you're getting involved. It was really exciting. Is a pilot program was amazing about It is it's there would have these little visitor centers with each of these little co forests, and then you can take you can just go and visit it You can is a bit like a $1,000,000 home page where every pixel was essentially funded. Where
Speaker 2: I remember that,
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you fund a square pixel Well, a picture square you fund a square meter on that's essentially visualize. And so when you were down there, you can go and see your bit of land that you've actually funded a picnic. I don't know. It's a real connection with essentially restoring the land and in 50 years and 100 years may being waddle down to and go see how is getting on might be cut down, but maybe the other one next to it might have been blooming and all sorts of things, and it's just a wonderful project to get behind. So yet that's code for us. Very excited about that one, too.
Speaker 2: I'm that's amazing. Out up with the books and co forest in the show Notes Co Forrester. Samarie. Interesting. I love the idea of popping up forests, and it sounds very open source as well. Like coming up for us all over. Ah, all over the world moment all over the country, at least in the
Speaker 1: UK Pop it for us is rubble for It's a nice idea. Yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah, that's a great way it's calling it. Yeah, so thank you very much, Elliott, for this conversation spending the time with us today It's been a fascinating journey to find all the things offset Earth are doing. I don't want to thank you for all the work that you're doing as well.
Speaker 1: And Kareem, it sure has been real pleasure. Teoh, talk this roof the last half hour
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