Header FAQ
We have tried to anticipate and answer as many questions as possible in the content of our website. Nevertheless, there are sometimes still things that require additional clarification. If you have questions that are not answered here, please contact us and we'll be happy to get back to you with answers.
We have tried to provide as much information as possible about the Trees4Trees™ program on our website, however if you do not see what you are looking for here, please feel free to contact us and we'll be glad to provide the information you are looking for. You can send inquiries to info@trees4trees.org or you can request information through our contact form here.
From time to time manufacturers that participate in the program forget to let us know they shipped the product with your WIN number on it. We only activate the WIN numbers after the manufacturer has reported the shipment with the WIN number and has actually paid the contribution to replace the trees. If you get a non-functioning number, please go to our contact form and send us the WIN you have. We will check it out and get back to you right away to let you know the correct status.
A WIN is a World Identification Number, which is used to track the trees we plant. WINs are assigned to trees funded by donations from individuals or companies that participate in the Trees4Trees™ Program. The WIN allows the donor to locate their trees on a map in this website.
We keep track of every tree we plant and monitor them regularly. The trees are recorded in our database with GPS coordinates of their location.
To see the location of your trees, just enter your WIN in the WINCheck field at the bottom of this page and click the arrow and you will be brought to the location where the tree is planted in Google Maps. If you just want to try out the system, you can put in a test number. Pick a number between 10.000 and 500.000. This almost always hits a live tree but if you get an unused number, just try another number until you get one with a live tree assigned.
If you have a WIN that came with a product you have purchased, just enter the WIN in the WINCheck field at the bottom of this page and we'll bring you to see the location on Google Maps. If you do not have a WIN, contact us through our contact page and we will try to track it down for you.
Trees4Trees™ grants ownership of the trees to the land owner where the trees are planted. The grower must provide proof of ownership of the land and sign a memorandum of understanding agreeing to attend Trees4Trees™ education program and provide proper care for the trees prior to receiving the seedlings. After that, the trees are owned free and clear by the land owner with no obligation to sell or otherwise compensate anyone in connection with the bequest.
No. The families that own the land that the trees are planted on are given the trees with no obligation to sell them to Trees4Trees™ or any other organization related to the planting. Trees4Trees™ does however offer a channel to the market for the trees which helps ensure that the grower will receive fair market prices for their timber when the trees reach their maturity. But it is the grower's sole discretion to decide who to sell their trees to.
The Trees4Trees Program is not a wood certification scheme. We go one better than that, we directly replant the trees that were harvested to make a product. The producer of the product that bears our logo has donated funds to Trees4Trees™ to plant the number of trees required to replace the wood they used in making the product. The WIN number and its link to a location on Google maps where the trees are planted are your proof that the manufacturer acted in a responsible way by replenishing the renewable resource that they used in your product.
There are many ways that local communities participating in the Trees4Trees Program are benefited. Our objective is to help the environment by making it economically advantageous to the people who are part of the program. Here are a few of the ways that they gain from participating:
- They get free seedlings of high value tree species that will grow into valuable assets for them
- They get access to fair market pricing to sell their trees when they have matured
- They get training to optimize the value of the trees they are planting and to help them improve their local living environment.
- They get the improved local environmental benefit of having greater forest cover which helps to reduce erosion, keeps cleaner rivers and better air quality.
- Some communities are the beneficiaries of seedling nurseries that Trees4Trees has sponsored. This provides an employment and high quality seedlings for use in their own newly established community forests.
Trees4Trees™ is a program conducted by a not for profit foundation established in Indonesia called Yayasan Bumi Hijau Lestari (Foundation for Sustainable Green Earth). As such the organization is a publicly registered foundation, not owned by anyone.
We have a volunteer board of directors made up of European, Australian, American and Indonesian individuals who set the vision and the policy for the Trees4Trees™ program. Our staff of locally based professional managers and specialists run the day to day operations and are compensated according to local norms.
Trees4Trees™ funds its operations through several sources:
- Responsible Wood products manufacturers donate funds to Trees4Trees™ to plant trees to replace the wood used in their products.
- Companies make donations to fund the planting of trees to reabsorb the CO2 their activities have released into the environment.
- Sponsors donate specific amounts to fund the establishment of a community forest in a particular village or area. They may also fund a school education program or a the establishment of a seedling nursery to provide seedlings for Trees4Trees™ regular planting activities. Sponsors may also elect to fund specific projects to help develop the program or benefit specific communities or the environment.
- Individuals and companies make donations and in return receive a certificate that give a link on Google Maps to the location of the trees planting by their donation and an estimate of the amount of CO2 their donated trees have captured from the atmosphere.
You can help by donating to the cause. Currently we do not send volunteers to the field due to liability and insurance issues however we do collaborate on studies and other environmental and social projects. If you have a project you think would fit with our program or are interested in studying our field data, you can send us a brief description and we'll get back to you to discuss it.
Our Sponsorship program is very flexible. Some of our standard offerings include adopting a village (community forest), you can fund a new community operated nursery project or you can fund an elementary education program. We are also open to special projects that you may have in mind and would welcome the opportunity to discuss those ideas with you. For all Sponsorships, please contact us here, and we will get right back to you with the information on how to become a Trees4Trees sponsor.
Yes. Although we do not issue certified carbon credits because we believe the carbon trading market is not an efficient way of offsetting carbon, the planting of trees does absorb CO2 from the environment and this fact is backed up by numerous studies by various institutions. Individual trees vary in the amount of CO2 they will absorb during their lifetime but we use the best available science to calculate average amounts of CO2 absorbed across all our plantings and apply this average as an estimate of the carbon that you will capture from the environment by your donation. We use very conservative numbers in our estimates and we therefore believe our estimates are a fair representation that your donation will have the estimated carbon capture or better.
No, Trees4Trees™ is a not for profit Indonesia based charity. To keep our overhead low and apply maximum benefit to our cause, we have not established legal domicile in any other countries.
All credit card donations are collected through Network for Good, a secure third-party payment system established specifically for processing donations for charities like us.
Because all transactions go through third parties, Trees4Trees™ does not receive or retain credit card numbers or other sensitive financial information.
Trees4Trees™ has an inventory of trees already planted but not yet funded. Upon receiving your donation, we assign one or more of those trees to you with a WIN to identify the specific trees. This way you get immediate credit for a planted living tree instead of having to wait until the planting season comes around to have your donation put into effect.
No. Trees4Trees™ uses seeds of the various species we plant that are derived from seed stocks with known natural but superior genetic characteristics. Seeds are carefully graded according to a standard developed by Trees4Trees™ and then planted in community nurseries established by Trees4Trees™. From the source to the final planting, the chain of custody is controlled by Trees4Trees™ to assure the best possible result to the grower but within natural parameters.
No. The species we plant is determined by the farmer on whose lands we plant the trees. Our goals are to help the environment by increasing forest cover and help local communities. To do this we plant the species that are most effective at achieving those goals. We are mainly concerned with replacing/increasing live biomass in the forest. To do this we rely on the motivation of local communities to look after the trees and therefore, we plant the trees that they prefer. Trees4Trees™ suggests a mix of species to each farmer based on what we have found to be the most successful in specific planting conditions and also upon the farmer’s economic goals. But in the end, it is the farmer who decides what will be planted on their land.
