To their surprise, the reply was succinct and almost unreal. “Sure, meet me at my office”. So after a late night preparing a pitch deck, Collias and Wedderburn-Day found themselves with their very first investor. 

Over the next five years, the founders saw their travel-tech platform, Stasher, reach 1200+ locations, raise $5m and reach a multi-million turnover. Their dream founder success story had even landed them in the Forbes 30U30 list.

But that all came crashing down when the pandemic grounded sales to zero. 

Collias and Wedderburn-Day suddenly found themselves with time to think, reflect and process. 

“Looking back, one of the few real positives of lockdowns was the effect on the climate. We all remember scenes of wildlife returning to cities!”. 

“We realised a lot of people are worried about climate change and want to do good for the planet. But knowing where to start can be daunting”; said Collias. 

They knew they wanted to do something to tackle climate change but at the same time, they felt a disconnect with a certain guilt-inducing holier-than-thou tendency among some climate activists.

And so Treepoints was born, an easy-to-use platform hoping to revolutionise the fight against climate change. The goal is to provide everyday individuals and businesses with a simple way to take meaningful climate action.

“We help people understand their carbon footprint and then do something about it through offsetting their emissions. It is vital to us that climate action is affordable and accessible to everyone - a subscription to offset your entire carbon footprint costs less than the price of a coffee per month," said Treepoints Co-Founder Wedderburn-Day. 

Launched in 2020 and bootstrapped until now, transparency is at the heart and the startup ensures all projects, offsets, receipts, certificates and financial statements are visible on their public ledger. 

“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 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. Think one product sold = one tree planted. 

Brands like Big Yellow; Hotel Chocolat; and Allies Of Skin are already onboard. Decorated Olympian’s Alistair Brownlee and Johnny Brownlee are amongst the investors  

“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 projects. We believe in the business (and its vision) to such an extent that we are both investors and look forward to working with them to make our existence carbon positive,” said the Brownlee brothers.

The latest funding round led by Charlotte street capital, 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 Weddernburn -Day have their eyes 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. 

With the market for renewables and carbon capture growing day-by-day, counterbalancing the emissions that stem from unavoidable necessities of modern life with platforms like Treepoints could soon become the norm.