How Click A Tree Makes Sustainability Simple for Businesses

In this interview, Chris Kaiser, the Founder and CEO of Click A Tree, shares his journey of creating a company dedicated to making sustainability accessible and impactful for businesses worldwide.

He discusses the company’s holistic approach to addressing all 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through initiatives like reforestation, ocean plastic collection, and community empowerment.

Chris also highlights the importance of integrating sustainability into business practices, emphasizing that it’s not just about doing good for the planet but ensuring that businesses profit from their efforts in the long term.

Core Mission and Sustainability Impact

Can you explain the core mission behind Click A Tree and how it contributes to sustainability?

Click A Tree makes sustainability dead simple for businesses across the globe.

By growing forests, collecting ocean trash, building schools, securing jobs etc we support all 17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations.

In cooperation with our business partners we incorporate this into their business processes to ensure our cooperation is economically viable.

Because it’s only holistically sustainable if all parties involved profit. And only then can it work in the long term.

Inspiration Behind Click A Tree

How did Click A Tree start, and what inspired the creation of the company?

From 2012 to 2017 I had the privilege to live in Thailand and work in very close contact with elephants.

Asian elephants usually live in forests. These forests decrease year on year, due to agriculture, infrastructure and climate change.

Hence my idea was to create more forests, so my beloved elephants would have a home to live in.

The goal is to firmly embed sustainability in everyday life. And to one day show my grandchildren real, live elephants.

Challenges in Implementing Sustainability

What are some of the biggest challenges companies face when trying to implement sustainability practices, and how does Click A Tree address them?

The biggest challenge companies face when talking about sustainability is usually the economic viability.

We all work and live in a capitalistic society, so businesses need to make money.

For that reason we always develop individual strategies with our business partners to ensure their sustainable engagement meets their goals.

Whether that’s higher revenues, increased profits, decreasing costs, better employer branding or increased customer lifetime value – we have proven it is all possible.

Another challenge that often arises is that businesses aren’t sure what to do first.

Grow forests to offset CO2 emissions? Protect biodiversity? Create jobs and education for social sustainability? Collect ocean trash? Which of the 17 SDGs to tackle first?

Because yes – they all are important.

That’s why, at Click A Tree, we’ve developed our projects in a way to now support all 17 SDGs at the same time. It’s no longer a “which one do I choose?”, it’s only an “incredible – here comes the whole package!”.

The Role of ESG in Click A Tree’s Model

What role do ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) strategies play in your business model?

An absolute key part. Because that’s what our business model is built on.

If companies wouldn’t care about ESG, Click A Tree wouldn’t exist.

Luckily for us, customers, employees, banks, investors and politicians are demanding ESG-engagement these days.

Hence, if a company still plans to be around by 2030, they’re obliged to commit to certain ESG efforts.

We can help make that happen with close to no effort.

Ensuring Long-Term Community Impact

How do you ensure that your sustainability efforts have long-term impacts on the communities where you operate?

Very good question. When originally deciding to grow forests for elephants, I invested quite a bit of time and money to research other forest-growing companies out there.

None of them could meet my standards. Mostly, because once I had sent them money to plant trees, I never heard from them again. That decreases transparency and hence trust.

With Click A Tree, I decided to go a different approach, and ensure that we regularly update all our business partners about the progress of their forests and the additional impact they’re making by securing jobs, financing education etc.

A donation is a one-sided transaction. You give money and that’s that.

With Click A Tree, you enter a business agreement. We need to make sure you get so much marketing material, publicity, employer branding or whatever it is that you’re after out of our cooperation, that you continue the cooperation.

And we’ve become very good at that – otherwise we wouldn’t be around anymore.

The same goes for the communities we work with. Of course we need to ensure the long-term partnership with them – if they stopped working with us, we couldn’t update our business partners about the positive progress on site any longer.

Hence we decided to not only pay the communities to plant the trees, but we also pay them in the long-term to nurse and protect the forests.

In addition, we regularly visit the projects and discuss with the people how to further increase our impact.

You see: The more trees we plant, the cheaper it becomes for us per tree. However, instead of offering discounts to our business partners, we use that money and start further projects with the communities – such as building schools, collecting ocean trash etc.

That ensures we have the full support of the entire community in the long term.

In December 2024 we went to visit our project in central Ghana. Speaking with the community was eye-opening. Not only did they confirm that we’re the only company ever who is invested in the long-term on site, but we’re also the highest paying employer in the region!

Which I found fantastic to find out. Because if we really aim for holistic sustainability, the people in the project communities should profit the most from this.

Benefits for Businesses Integrating Click A Tree

Could you share how companies can benefit from integrating Click A Tree into their ESG strategies?

There are tons of ESG solutions for companies, depending on the respective goals of our business partners.

Some examples:

Best Western in Europe plants 1 tree for every new job application they receive. It incentivizes especially young talents to apply.

Since there’s a shortage of skilled workers in many companies, it’s a fantastic way to attract more applications.

And it works – the number of applications has significantly increased since starting the collaboration!

Plus it’s brilliant for their employer branding.

A lot of hotels offer to remove 1kg of plastic from the ocean in case their guests skip housekeeping. It’s a wonderful incentive for guests to do so.

The hotel saves time and money for cleaning the room. They relieve their cleaning team. And they get great marketing and PR opportunities from it by promoting their ESG engagement.

Again – win-win-win.

For Christmas, companies like Mercedes Benz gave out tree certificates as meaningful Christmas gifts to their team members.

Employees loved it. Because, honestly – would you rather receive your 13th coffee mug or a stylish tree certificate, which also comes with lots of updates, photos and stories from the forest development?

It’s a feel-good factor at its finest.

The Best Western Hotels included “planting a tree” into their loyalty program worldwide. Guests can now swap their loyalty points to plant trees.

What better way to symbolize the long-term thinking of a loyalty program?

Lots of companies these days simply offer trees as upsell. E.g. when booking events, when purchasing things online etc, you can easily offset carbon emissions by growing trees.

The costs are borne by the clients – but the marketing of the resulting forest benefits the respective business.

Of course it’s also possible to plant 1 tree for every purchased product, for every 1,000 $ in revenue, for every club member, per new client or simply to offset the carbon emissions your business causes. Anything is possible.

The most important part: Get started.

Evolution of CSR and Sustainability

How has the landscape for sustainability and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) evolved in recent years?

CSR is becoming ever more present. Both in the minds of customers and hence in the minds of companies as well.

It’s great to see that more and more people understand that we can’t continue running a company like it’s the 1950s, and we have to live up to our responsibility towards the planet.

We only have one planet, and it’s definitely worth protecting.

(Side fact: The planet actually doesn’t care at all whether we protect it or not. The only thing we’re trying to protect is our planet as we know it.

A planet where heat waves, forest fires, tornados, freak waves and a loss of biodiversity aren’t an everyday thing. But a planet that’s green, lively and worth exploring.

What sustainability actually means is “protecting the planet so we humans can live on it”.

Planet Earth will continue to exist, even with daily tornados, freak waves, unbearable heat, forest fires and zero biodiversity. But us humans won’t. Or at least we won’t enjoy it.)

Common Misconceptions About Sustainability

What are some of the most common misconceptions businesses have about sustainability, and how do you educate them?

The main misconception is that sustainability is hard or complicated.

It’s not. All you need is the decision to become more sustainable, and then you can make the first step right now – plant trees via https://clickatree.com/en/action.

The first step is always the hardest. In this case, that first step is merely the decision that you actually want to take that first step.

The beautiful thing is, that everything else will follow.

Once you’ve planted your first trees, talk about it. (Yes, we offer pre-written marketing material.)

Once you start talking about it, invite both clients and employees to offer their ideas about what to do next.

Simply publish: “We’ve committed to becoming more sustainable. To prove we’re serious, we’ve just planted the first 1,000 trees in the Philippines and removed 1,000kg of plastic trash from the ocean.

However, we’re also aware that this merely is the first step. Which next step would you like us to take?” It works wonders for community engagement!

Be open, honest, transparent, and invite all your stakeholders onto the journey.

Partnership Process for Businesses

Can you discuss the partnership process for businesses looking to implement sustainability projects through Click A Tree?

Sure. That really is dead simple.

Option 1: Go to https://clickatree.com/en/action and start growing your company forest. You’re already on your way.

Option 2: Send us an email to [email protected]. Then we can discuss your goals and ideas and offer feedback on how to best implement more sustainability into your business. We’re always happy to help.

Option 3: Book a meeting with me via my calendar link. Happy to discuss the possibilities with you.

In either case: There never is any long-term commitment from your side, no base fee, no minimum order quantity, no hidden cost and no imprint.

All there is are the costs per tree. Nothing else.

If you want to plant one single tree right now and then never deal with us again, you can.

But we know that the very vast majority of our business partners work with us for the long-term – because they, too, profit from that cooperation.

Measuring Success of Sustainability Projects

How do you measure the success of the sustainability projects you are involved in, both for businesses and local communities?

We always focus on maximizing our impact. How much impact can we achieve with the money we have available?

Then we discuss with the local communities what they need the most, and get to work.

Impact can be measured in CO2 stats, area reforested, work days created, educational days financed, plastic collected etc. We share all these stats transparently in our Impact Portal, so each client sees exactly what their engagement effects – and can easily share these stats with their fans.

The more impact we make with our project communities, the bigger the impact for our business partners as well: They receive more marketing material, more images, more stories to share, more impact stats etc.

It’s always a win-win-win we’re aiming for.

Most Rewarding Part of Sustainability Work

What is the most rewarding part of working in sustainability, and what keeps you motivated?

The most rewarding part is definitely visiting the projects and witnessing the progress on site.

Speaking with the people assures me we’re doing the right thing in the right place.

And visiting my beloved elephants in Thailand every now and then helps me remember why I started the entire undertaking – and why it’s worth pushing through when the going gets tough.

Innovative Sustainability Initiatives

What are some of the most innovative sustainability initiatives that Click A Tree has implemented?

One of the initiatives I’m most proud of is our plastic collection project in the Philippines.

When, back in 2019, we realized we do have additional cash to increase our impact, I discussed with the locals what they’d need.

“Less plastic in the ocean” was the answer.

“Alright”, I said, “who doesn’t love a clean beach?”

“It’s not about a clean beach, white man. It’s about the plastic killing all the marine wildlife – and hence we can’t go fishing anymore.”, they said.

Good point. Interesting, how Westerners often have a very different point of view on things…

So we started collecting ocean trash.

Great for the community: Planting trees is a tough, physical job, often done by younger people. Collecting plastic was an option also for older people to earn an income.

Great, I thought, and moved on with my business.

After three months, our project manager sent me a picture of an entire school yard full of trash.

“What now?”, he asked.

Wow. I must admit – I hadn’t thought that far.

“Can you recycle it?”, I asked. My German brain thought of that classic, German recycling system. Divide your trash into plastic, paper, glass, biological waste and others, and then the government takes care of it.

“No. That doesn’t exist here. But we can burn it, if you like.”

Yeah, no, I didn’t like that.

“Any other thoughts?”

“Let me check.”, he said.

Two weeks later he messaged me “I found a guy who can make flower pots out of plastic waste. Go ahead?”

Generally a good idea. But who needs thousands of flower pots?

We discussed a little further, whether there are other options, and what would be a useful product we could create.

Long story short: We’re now making chairs for schools out of the plastic trash.

It’s brilliant to see how both the schools and the kids love it, and how we can throw in some education about plastic waste for the youngsters.

It all came down to me taking action before thinking things through.

And I’m proud I did. So many people sit in their rooms and think about things, waiting for the perfect solution to appear, the perfect moment to begin, but never actually start doing anything.

This example proves: Get started, start doing, and solutions will appear along the way.

Sustainability’s Future in the Corporate World

How do you see the role of sustainability evolving in the corporate world in the next 5 to 10 years?

I can’t speak for the entire planet, but at least in the Western world sustainability will be as omnipresent as digitization is these days. If you miss jumping on the band wagon, you’ll disappear like Kodak and Blockbuster did.

In Europe, starting this year, large corporations need to file sustainability reports, which are equal in weight as their financial reports. Don’t do it and you pay hefty fines or even go to jail.

It’s a very clear sign where we’re headed…

And yeah, even besides political regulations – isn’t it just the right thing to do?

Advice for Entrepreneurs on Sustainability

What advice would you give to entrepreneurs and business owners looking to incorporate sustainability into their operations?

Just one thing: Start doing it.

Stop overthinking. Or hoping for that perfect plan.

No business and no person ever will be perfect. And we don’t have to be.

But in 10 years’ time we’ll only regret the things we didn’t do.

So start now doing the things you know are valuable and impactful.

Incorporating sustainability projects is definitely a thing you can begin with right now.