Planting Trees for Environmental Impact – Luca Giordaniello, Evertreen

This is texturung TV. Hello, and welcome to techstrong TV. I'm Bonnie Schneider today.

We're discussing tree planting as a solution for businesses seeking to make a positive environmental impact on the planet Our Guest today are co-founders Dan chufo and Luca Gian. Donello. com the platform that enables users to plant trees online and track their growth via satellite and videos taken by local farmers.

Welcome to you both and thanks for joining us on Tech strong TV. Thank you very much, Bonnie. Thank you for having us here.

Can you tell us a little bit about evertree and how you got started and how this whole concept works? So evertrin is a tree planting platform that makes reforestation service for for businesses. So This is the way we work.

We first partner. We organizations of farmers in different countries of the world. And we start working at three forestation projects with them.

We also directly commit with them to sponsor assert a certain number of trees and rear because we want to Grant the survival of the project over time. And also we want to make sure that they have a stable job. We then look for companies worldwide that would be willing to sponsor trees in this projects and we work with them.

And so we try to add value to them, right? So we not only plant trees for them, but we try to also support them with their other needs. That can be for example marketing.

And yeah, so we help them with their marketing or we just provide them with the with the transparency that they need to stay engaged over time. So how we So we try to provide. Transparency to them with the satellite monitoring service that we offer with the videos from Farmers.

So that farmers directly take from the plantation and also Just with documentation from third-party or the audience. So we completely take care of the communication between farmers and international companies that that farmers just wouldn't be able to do because they don't have the skills or just because enter the team to do that. So we give disability to to three planting projects and we have succeeded in making this a service for companies that adds value to them over time.

And can you walk us through the user experience of what it's like to plant the trees and how how the growth and the progress is monitored on your platform. And I'm also interested if you can talk about how this whole process benefits local farmers. Absolutely, I'll take this one.

So everything in the comb we aim to make three planting in the process as easy and accessible to everyone so companies and mutual can plan to line with just a few click. So it's very easy to to be part of it. So once the trees planted users either company of individual will have their own company account or individual account and on the platform they can track several metrics.

So therefore is such as you know, the number of trees that they planted and the project and the location of the projects this YouTube which is, you know set by the trees and they're working hours that we are creating for for local farmers. So by the account page users can also give trees to other people for example, so if your company you can give three East your employees or to you and so we aim to offer Max transparency and we tend to show visually the trees that are planted as we record as Luca mentioned. Updates when the three are planted or even for example in quarterly basis and as you ask, you know, how does it benefit the farmers?

Basically, we are creating working hours for people in in countries where we planned mostly emerging economies, for example, and therefore we are creating a word for them. So working hours and they can benefit from the fruits of the trees for example, and also they got labeled and working hours from the job that they do for us. And can businesses request specific types of trees that they would like to plant.

And basically the platform allows a very various degrees of flexibility so users for example can choose when the where they want to plant so one or multiple locations because we're projects based everywhere really globally in in several continents as I mentioned in Central America in Africa or also in Asia and however, let me clarify that we don't support monocultures and that simply because we want to respect the local ecosystems and we want to plan trees there are native of the areas where we planting. So depending on the season depending on the area where we planting we select a mix of trees that would survive in that area and good Prime because we are looking at the long term approach and also, you know, we're looking at a mix of trees that will create the perfect environment for support wildlife in that area. Luca can you talk to us a little bit about the technology behind the satellite monitoring system that you use?

Sure, so that's actually third-party service. Of course. We don't have our own satellite.

And so we're a third party service which is based on satellite images updated every week. So based on these images the tool that we use is working with artificial intelligence and it's able to detect the changes in the field. But at a very deep level so it can be it can give us for example information about the progress of the field over time in terms of presence of trees, for example, so of green leaves and of course because we are planting trees we expect fields to get greener, but it can also go much deeper so it can give and you can give us information on the soil fertility or the water stress at our at the level of the root of trees and also it can even detect If plants have diseases.

So this is the way that we offer clients and companies to basically check on on our work and see that there is actually there after years. That's an interesting. So they're able to check on it.

And you know, a lot of our viewers that are watching on Tech strong TV work in the tech industry. So Dan, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the accuracy and reliability of the data that you're providing for on your platform. Of course, I was looking mentioned.

We relying on all the satellites in this case. We rely on something on a satellite which is cool sent, you know to and was launched as part of the European commission Copernicus program into 2015. So the satellite is an orbit at an average weight height of 800 kilometers and because it's too satellites in orbit.

They can take pictures every five days of the Equator and every two three days a middle latitude. So send, you know to data and provides Global monitoring for when environmental and security program and which is being implemented by the European commission and the European space agencies. So very reliable parties that we talked about here indeed I used for very reasons like Land Management.

I will go for production and Forestry and monitoring like natural disaster and humanitarian operations in this case. Also to monitor like forest and replanting as we use for more. Luca arms we talked.

a little data but bits of information that are coming through what measures are you taking to protect the privacy and security of that information? So we are fully compliant with the UK data protection measures and also companies when they register they can decide if they want their account so their contribution to be public or not. So if they decide that they wanted to be public.

This means that everybody can go on our platform and see that their company. So of course just a brand and the name of the company sponsored this number of trees in these areas and also they're able to see the GPS coordinates of the trees. But when a company chooses that yeah, they want their contribution to stay just let's say in secret for different reasons because maybe they just don't want to communicate it or just from marketing and around this then this is also not shared but in just in both cases The data is is centralized and not communicated outside the yeah, the the platform and also the same is value for Farmers.

So farmers do not communicate to companies and companies do not know the names of the farmers involves or so. I see. That makes sense.

So Dan, what about AI is that something that you're using in this process in terms of? Taking getting insights and the health and the growth of the trees. Absolutely.

So let's look I mentioned previously, you know, we rely on AI technology on the satellite images that we're using for monitoring purposes in addition to that in some of our projects. We also adopting ai-powered three counting measures because this represent a faster more accurate and cost-effective solution to countries and therefore we are avoiding manual counting and potential human errors. And therefore we aim to offer more transparency to partner companies that plant with us.

We are also implementing AI further on rooms not only to come trees but also to be able to recognize the company that the trees belong to and this will further an answer the transparency for companies that basically choose the country knew that we can expect in terms of future Technologies Luca that you're working on forever train. Yes, actually we are trying to implement quite annuity system to directly geological eyes trees so we want to provide Farmers with with a bracelet and planting sides with photocells and Farmers, we receive the planting orders by the bracelet And the photo cells we automatically take a picture of the farmer just planting those trees the bracelet will also collect the yeah the GPS coordinates of the tree. While being planted and this information will just be uploaded directly into the platform and the company that sponsor those trees will be able to see it immediately.

It sounds like a really an interesting proposition, but I think also in the world of sustainability where people are looking to do an environmental investment and feel positive about what they're doing. I'm sure this is one final question, but do you both feel that you're on a mission that's beyond economics that you're you're helping to plant more trees and to get people more connected to Nature. Yes, so definitely.

Yes. I mean the purpose of every three is to connect companies and people too to just to the nature. So we want three planting to be something that everybody can do just while sitting at home, you know, just in their free time or that adds value to businesses.

So yeah, the main purpose is that and it has always been that. It's definitely making a difference across the planet to have more trees Dan Luca of Evergreen. Thank you so much for joining us on techstrong TV.

We look forward to seeing the progress of your company and all the trees that are going to be planted globally as a result. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having thank you.

Great. All right. Well stay with us.

We have more on Tech strong TV coming up.