Nature Lovers
Without nature we wouldn't be here. It's not a food chain, it's a balanced eco system.
Every parliament member, mayor, local council or even beauty queen preaches about saving the planet, but when they get elected.... nothing happens. So that's why we're here!
We were founded to make a difference, a difference that people promise they'll do but currently have fallen short year on year of their goals.
In the year to March 2019, the number of trees planted across the UK went up: 13,400 hectares of new woodland was planted. Most of it was in Scotland (11,200 hectares), while there was actually a decrease in planting in England.
But these UK-wide figures fall way short of where they were in the late 1980s, when about 30,000 hectares were planted every year.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives have pledged to plant at least 30 million more trees every year, the Lib Dems and the SNP each say they will plant 60 million trees a year, while the Green Party would aim to plant 700 million trees by 2030.
Do you think the government will hit its targets? If so then maybe it is safer in their hands, or maybe every little helps.
Our goals aren't small but they're achievable. We've built ourselves to be flexible, fast acting, smart and most importantly.... transparent!
About our team
We're a group of carefully selected people to ensure every step we take is the correct one.
We have business-minded people, focused on working with businesses. Doctorates in agronomy focused on ensuring our saplings have the best chances of becoming full grown. Nature lovers to make sure we're all on the same track and much more.
"The best thing about what we do is people who don't like nature get weeded out as soon as it rains. A natural recruitment process per se."
Thomas Barker - Founder
CEO & Mission Statement
Founder Mission Statement
"To be transparent, to give back and to start something that will be passed on for others to continue. As it's not about us, but the future."
History
Foreword: I'm not really one for talking about myself, ask anyone who knows me. However, after being informed by a PR agency that it's the best way to connect, and being told it's not the same if I use a cartoon picture of me or write as if it's an essay, I took their advice.
I was brought up on a working farm, being in nature from a young age, the freezing cold 4 am starts, soggy socks in your boots, it does something to you.
I moved onto spend a couple of years working for a famous agricultural research centre working mainly with plant-parasitic nematodes before winning the Spark house entrepreneurs grant and making the move into the commercial world when I was around 20. But I never lost the itch to be outside.
In 2016-2018 I helped a charity in London gain access to £250,000 a year funding. In 2018/2019 I decided to focus back on nature, so with big dreams, I moved my attention to Asia. The goal was to create a dedicated team of beach cleaners in and around the various countries where sea pollution was the worst.
I tried many different approaches but the hardest part was finding someone trustworthy in each country.
The process was simple, we need to collect funds from UK companies who donated £XX for every tonne of plastic we removed from the ocean, this money would go directly from the UK to a resident within the countries who can organise the beach cleaning army and pay their salaries.
The issue was big, when the basic salary in countries like Indonesia can be as little as £300 a month, if we're transferring £10,000+ to pay the cleaning team, and most of the workers will be paid in cash as they won't have bank accounts it was too easy for the money to go missing.
Pessimistic you may say, but given even here in the UK, in the USA and other western countries big cat charity CEOs have been caught buying property through the donations their charities receive, it's an industry which can easily get abused.
So instead of packing it in, I went back to basics and something I knew well, UK Farming. Which took me on a 2-year quest to establish SoftStep. The first step in a huge global project.