Tesla CEO Elon Musk has donated one million trees to the Arbor Day Foundation. After hearing about the scheme via YouTuber Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) on Twitter, Musk replied: “ok, sounds legit, will donate 1M trees”, and proceeded to do so via teamtrees.org, and change his name on Twitter to “Treelon”.
In May 2019 the internet challenged YouTuber MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) to plant 20 million trees after he reached 20 million subscribers. To make it happen, he banded with other YouTubers to set up #TeamTrees, a platform for people to donate money for planting trees at a rate of $1 per tree.
To make it successful, they partnered with Arbor Day Foundation, the longest-running tree-planting NGO (non-governmental organisation).
Joining Musk on the #teamtrees leaderboard are MrBeast himself, Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke (beating Musk by one tree), YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and DJ Alan Walker.
A recent Science study found that planting billions of trees is the “most effective strategy” for combating climate change, so schemes like #TeamTrees are a step in the right direction for saving the planet.