UK startup Treepoints targeting 67 million trees with backing from Olympian Brothers

Image credit: Chris Sansom

Treepoints, the startup revolutionising the fight against climate change has just raised £150,000 in a round led by Charlotte Street Capital and including decorated Olympians Alistair Brownlee and Jonny Brownlee. 

The latest funding round will help Treepoints continue to scale its carbon offsetting services for businesses and individuals alike whilst maintaining an altruistic approach, with Treepoints recent social-enterprise and B-Corp pending status.

Collias and Wedderburn-Day have their eyes set on planting a tree for every UK resident, and believe their latest funding round will help them achieve that target of 67 million trees within five years.

The platform created by Oxford University graduates Anthony Collias and Jacob Wedderburn-Day aims to provide everyday individuals and businesses with a simple way to take meaningful climate action.

“We wanted to do something to tackle climate change but at the same time we felt a disconnect with a certain guilt-inducing holier-than-thou tendency among some climate activists”. 

“We figured people are happy to subscribe to music and streaming services, so why couldn’t it be the same for climate amelioration”; said Collias. 

It works by calculating businesses and individuals' carbon footprint through their carbon calculator, powered by data from the World Bank and the World Wildlife Federation. 

Once this is estimated, users or businesses will be able to select a comprehensive Treepoints planet positive subscription comprising of a varied portfolio of tree planting, offsetting and recycling ocean-bound plastic vetted by some of the world’s leading UN-certified sustainable projects. 

But that’s not all, Treepoints offers an API for business partners which enables a customisable and easy way to automate the purchase of trees, carbon offers, or plastic recycling directly from their application or service, giving real-time insights, data and statistics on total impact. 

The start-up also got the backing of recent investors Alistair Brownlee, MBE and Jonny Brownlee, MBE. 

“We have spent our lives training outside, surrounded and inspired by the natural world around us. This has led us to be passionate about the importance of protecting local habitats and the wider environment. At the same time, we are aware of the negative environmental consequences of our lifestyles as professional athletes. 

That is why we believe in Treepoints as an important part of the solution to a lower carbon existence. It is also important to us that Treepoints is easy for anyone to use and that the utmost care is taken in selecting the offsetting project's. We believe in the business (and its vision) to such an extent that we are both investor's and look forward to working with them to make our existence carbon positive”.

The Brownlee brothers are not the only ones who are getting excited by Treepoints, brands like Big Yellow; Hotel Chocolat; and Allies of Skin are already onboard.