Tentree: Grow the World, Love the World

There is immense beauty in the world. When you adventure outdoors, you not only stimulate physical movement, but you begin to form connections with the nature that surrounds you. The more you venture, the deeper the bond you will form with the vast outdoors, the great unknown, and the world’s most beautiful wonders. This deep connection has inspired some companies and organizations to protect the world’s natural beauty and to assure that our generation is not only actively doing our part to protect our surroundings, but guaranteeing that future generations get to roam the world’s wonders in awe just as we have. Tentree is one environmentally conscious company that is determined in curating a culture that aims to protect our land through reforestation. More than that, Tentree aims to bring employment and inspiration to communities around the world that benefit from their tree-planting projects.On a mild November morning, I had the opportunity of speaking with Derrick Emsley, one of the co-founders and the CEO of Tentree. Derrick elaborated on how this idea to give back, to change the world, and to be a proponent for environmental protection and reforestation came to be. When he was in high school, Derrick and his brother engineered and founded a tree-planting business that was purposed to sell carbon offsets. But, what Derrick and his brother established nine years ago, through planting these trees on marginal farmlands, was more than just a business; they instilled in themselves a determination to give back to the world and a passion to use their talents in order to pioneer a revolution of reforestation.This deep love and admiration for the outdoors led Derrick’s brother and another one of Tentree’s partners through the jungles of Oahu. While on a hike, they were peering from a mountaintop over the luscious Hawaiian lands. On one side of the island, they could see magnificent, untouched forests, but, when their eyes scanned to the other side of the island, they noticed, in stark contrast, the bustling city of Honolulu, which prompted the question that is central to their company: “What can we do to have a more meaningful impact? What can we do to protect the environment?” Derrick went on to acknowledge this socially conscious movement that was forming around the time that Tentree came into existence. This idea of “tying direct impact to a product” inspired the founders of Tentree to connect the action and business of its customers to powerful and sustainable impact throughout the world. The daunting idea, then, of the environmental degradation and erosion that is affected by past and present behavior becomes a cause that each and every person can care about. As such, Tentree’s work aims “to educate every Tentree consumer on the incredible impact they can have” and of their “ability to positively affect what will happen in the future.”Today, Tentree’s apparel and accessories are found in about 600 stores across North America. With each purchase, Tentree plants ten trees in communities throughout the world, and since the early days of their existence, Tentree has planted more than 6.5 million trees, working in more than 13 different countries across the world. Their goal is to have planted over 10 million trees by the end of 2016. What has made Tentree so successful in its global reforestation efforts is the uniqueness of each of its projects. For instance, their work in Madagascar aims to restore wetlands. Determined to provide for themselves and for their families, the local Madagascar people began cutting trees for wood and other resources. Without an understanding of the importance of these trees to the ecosystems of these communities and to the environment that surrounds these communities, deforestation continued to negatively affect the quality of life within these communities. In fact, the trees were distinctly instrumental in the ecosystems of these Madagascar villages as they were holding in the soil for these beach communities. Moreover, the root beds of these trees were providing fish hatchery for the marine life. As a result, when the trees were cut down, and when the soil began to erode, the fish were forced to leave, and without much fish, the fishing community began to diminish as well. Looking to partially, or even wholly, answer this pressing issue, Tentree employed more than 300 people in Madagascar in tree-planting and educated them on sustainable tree-planting practices.Detailing another region within which Tentree is implementing tree-planting educational programs and employment opportunities, Derrick described a personally impactful experience that he had with a local farmer in Senegal. He elaborated that during his visit in 2014, the Ebola epidemic made it difficult and risky to travel within and around the western African region. However, it was the simple and profound sincerity and generosity of Malik, the farmer that Tentree was working with in Senegal, that prevailed over even the most pressing concerns of an Ebola epidemic. While sitting in his forestry garden, amid thousands of trees that Malik had planted, Derrick saw the literal fruits of Malik’s work in tree-planting. About four years prior, Malik had been a peanut farmer with which he could barely make an affordable living for himself and for his family. In fact, Derrick noted that he was making “at most $250 USD a year on those peanut crops.” However, since planting and harvesting the fruit trees, Malik was making up to six-times as much as he ever did, and he was able to abundantly provide for his family. Derrick added that Malik is acting as “one of Tentree’s lead farmers, now, and he is managing twenty other farmers and helping them with the impact that they can have.” By Tentree’s efforts in holistically aiding communities around the world through planting trees, Malik has been empowered to overcome poverty and to provide his children with a different life than the one he had. Derrick gave a fitting illustration of how this empowerment has transformed Malik’s own life and the lives of all others in the communities that Tentree’s work impacts. While talking and visiting with Malik, one of Malik’s children walked over to the street, picked up a big stem, and started to whack down fruit from a tree. Then, as he rejoined his father, he thought to share some of his own, hard-picked fruit with Derrick. “At first,” Derrick added, “I just sort of thought, ‘this is a cute kid … how nice,’ but then I sort of thought to myself, and I realized, this kid is two-years-old and he’s grown up in a completely different world from his father’s and sister’s, together. He’s grown up in a world where he hasn’t known hunger; he hasn’t known malnutrition, and the inability to find food …. So, he’s sitting there, handing me this fruit, being generous, and he’s more concerned about my hunger than his own.”Stories such as these give Tentree inherent meaning and worth in its efforts not only to positively affect the environment, but to provide people across the world, in communities where the quality of life has been widely affected by environmental degradation, with new hope, new meaning, and new life. Even more than that, Tentree invites its customers and supporters to join in on this movement that it is generating. In involving yourself, through buying, through learning, or through sharing, in Tentree’s work and its mission, you are involving yourself in its goal to become the most environmentally progressive plan on the planet and its ambition to plant 1 billion trees around the world. With a Tentree purchase, then, your impact does not just go to planting trees in an effort to save the environment and combat deforestation but, rather, your action surpasses even gross environmental impact to influence and transform the lives of real people all around the world.This Christmas or holiday season, you may choose to partner with Tentree: to buy a tee-shirt, a sweatshirt, a hat, or a journal. But, in supporting Tentree, in embarking on this journey to empower and enable people around the world to enjoy the best lives they could be given, all while positively and lastingly impacting the environment, you are investing in life around the world. Through rebirthing the lives of trees, or through investing in and encouraging the lives of the caretakers of those trees, you are partnering with Tentree’s mission. In fact, with every purchase, you receive a tree token, a code where you will be able to track where your trees have been planted and the tangible impact your trees have made on communities around the world. So, this Christmas season, you may decide to plant ten trees, and with those trees, you may just breathe life into a community that needs that bit of fresh air to dream, to hope, and to live freely again.Here are some of my favorite holiday picks:Freedom hoodie – Find it here!Creation sweats – Comes in two colors, here!Lush flannel – Comes in three colors, here!Woodsman hoodie/jacket for your man – Comes in two colors, here!Gilligan button-down for him – Comes in two colors, here!Thicket baseball cap for him – Check it out here!Voyager beanie – Comes in two colors, here!Centurian shades – Get ‘em here!