For Earth Month 2024, we are sharing our 1% for the Planet story, featuring our partner Sustainable Surf, the nonprofit behind SeaTrees.
SeaTrees is an online giving marketplace that draws attention to the enormously important role that the oceans play in sustaining human and planetary health. The platform also facilitates donations to projects at the local level to restore ocean health, reduce acidification, and accelerate blue carbon projects.
As Sylvia Earle, the famed oceanographer and explorer, says, "No Ocean. No Us."
The world's oceans absorb carbon from the atmosphere at an extraordinary scale. They are a source of food and livelihood for millions of people. And they are where life itself is thought to have started, and continues to thrive.
In 2023, Unwrapit supported a range of environmental nonprofits through various gift campaigns of our own. At the end of the year, we topped up our 1% commitment with a donation to SeaTrees. We couldn't think of a better partner to support at a time when oceans need our help and we need theirs.
In addition to our direct support of SeaTrees, Unwrapit also features the Kelp Carbon Science Study as a gift option for our customers to include in their own corporate and event gifting campaigns.
The Kelp Carbon Science Study is a project of SeaTrees, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Silvestrum Climate Associates, WILDCOAST, and Coastal Quest.
When our customers include this gift option in their campaigns, their gift recipients have an opportunity to learn about the role that kelp forests play in ocean health. Recipients who go on to select a donation to this project as their preferred gift are directly supporting scientific research aimed at quantifying the role of kelp forests in carbon sequestration.
Since adding the Kelp Carbon Science Study as a gift option to Unwrapit, 52 people across 8 gift campaigns have chosen it as their preferred gift option. In some cases, recipients chose to support the kelp research over receiving a gift card redeemable for meal delivery, coffee, and other attractive options.
While the aggregate amount of these donations may not be huge, as a gesture, the recipients who chose to support the Kelp Carbon Science Study represent the admirable human trait of choosing to pay it forward when offered a choice of gift.
We thank them as well as the teams behind Sustainable Surf, SeaTrees, and the Kelp Carbon Science Study.