Earlier this year, we introduced Lime Prime, our monthly membership subscription service aimed at helping the most frequent riders save money and ride even more by reducing the cost of each ride. As part of our initial program, we partnered with One Tree Planted, offering to plant a tree for every new rider who signed up for Lime Prime. We thought we might add a little more green to this world when our most loyal riders chose to ride green.

We were shocked by the result: we received 60,000 Lime Prime sign-ups over the course of a month and a half, which will lead to 60,000 trees being planted in four regions around the globe, cleaning the air, helping protect waterways, and providing critical habitat. We love the idea that our Prime riders can think about the tree planted on their behalf every time they go out and ride!

One Tree Planted, with its mission focused on global reforestation, felt like the perfect partner for the effort. Their goal is to make it simple for anyone to help the environment by planting trees, contributing to restoring forests, creating habitat for biodiversity, and making a positive social impact around the world.

“We know how important our mission is to our riders, and we’re eager to find ways to support our most loyal riders in ways that enhance this mission, ” said Andrew Savage, Head of Sustainability at Lime. “With projects spanning from North America to Romania and Australia, we love the idea of our riders knowing there’s a tree growing up on their behalf, cleaning the air and restoring local ecosystems.”

With addressing climate change at the core of our shared mission with One Tree Planted, another 60,000 trees certainly won’t hurt. Forests are key to addressing global warming. At the recently concluded COP26, over 100 leaders have committed to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. We must restore our forests. Trees help clean the air we breathe, filter the water we drink and provide habitat to over 80% of the world's terrestrial biodiversity. Forests provide jobs to over 1.6 billion people, absorb harmful carbon from the atmosphere, and are key ingredients in 25% of all medicines.

"Restoring forests is one of the best ways to support biodiversity and create a cleaner, healthier environment," said Diana Chaplin, Canopy Director at One Tree Planted. "It's incredible to see community participation with Lime resulting in a positive global impact for reforestation."

You can learn more about each project below:

• Romania, Reviving the Carpathians - In the Fagaras Mountains of the southern Carpathians, significant forests were cleared from 2005-2015 and have not been replanted. Most forests in the project area have been already cut once throughout the last century and many of these areas have been replanted with spruce rather than the original tree species. Based on a survey of the existing natural regeneration, One Tree Planted created a restoration plan.

• Australia, Cassowary Coast Regeneration - This restoration project will take place on a property located in the buffer zone of Japoon National Park in the Cassowary Coast Shire of Tropical North Queensland. The property was recently purchased by a local community member who is passionate about restoring it for local biodiversity and has registered it with the Land For Wildlife program. The region is critical habitat for the Southern Cassowary and Mahogany Glider, and Platypus have been identified in the creek running through the property.

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• California, Creek Fire Restoration - One Tree Planted’s goal is to reforest areas burned by the Creek fire of 2020. They will be preparing the land in a variety of ways and planting a mix of conifer species at a rate of roughly 200 seedlings per acre. The mix of species, as well as planting density, will be determined by site characteristics and elevation. The Creek fire erupted in early September of 2020 so we are coming into our first spring post-fire. Mastication, control burning, and targeted herbicide application or a combination will be used to control competing brush and prepare sites for planting.

• British Columbia, Canada 2 Million Trees for Forest Fire Recovery - This project will reforest areas burned during BC’s 2017 wildfires: Elephant hill wildfire, Hanceville wildfire, Plateau wildfire, Gustafsen wildfire and Doherty Lake wildfire. These lands were severely burned and are not expected to reforest naturally except in the very long term. The planted trees will provide various habitat values, hydrological values, and sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere.

Enabling people to “Ride Green” and travel sustainably is core to our mission as we seek to build a transportation future that is shared, affordable and carbon-free service. For more information on what we’ve accomplished thus far as well as our future plans, visit ridegreen.li.me.