Ant Forest, a successful innovation
Written by: LI Yuqiu, Rachel
On September 19th, 2019, Ant Forest, an application on Alipay, won Champions of the Earth award, the United Nation’s highest environmental honor. Since the launch of this green project by Ant Financial Services Group, an Alibaba affiliate, Ant Forest group and its NGO partners such as SEE Foundation have successfully planted about 122 million trees in the driest regions in China, including Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Qinghai.
On the Ant Forest mobile app, users can get virtual green credits through green behaviors such as walking, using public transport, adopting e-payments and so on. When the credits accumulate to a certain amount, the user can let Alibaba plant a real tree to improve the environment. In other words, the users of Ant Forest are improving the environment in two dimensions. One is through greener behaviors in their daily lives, and the other is the real trees planted by Alibaba.
How can Ant Forest become such a successful long-term commonwealth project when one-off commonwealth campaigns are prevailing? This is due to the combination of the Internet and commonwealth programs. Firstly, through the app users can continuously receive positive feedback. The amount of green credits users gain was calculated according to a professional carbon reduction algorithm developed by Ant Financial and the Beijing Environment Exchange. It means that users can know how much carbon emissions they have saved each day in a scientific and measurable way. Besides, after users swap their green credits for real trees, they can see the forest planted by Alibaba in the real-time photo album on the application.
How can Ant Forest become such a successful long-term commonwealth project when one-off commonwealth campaigns are prevailing? This is due to the combination of the Internet and commonwealth programs. Firstly, through the app users can continuously receive positive feedback. The amount of green credits users gain was calculated according to a professional carbon reduction algorithm developed by Ant Financial and the Beijing Environment Exchange. It means that users can know how much carbon emissions they have saved each day in a scientific and measurable way. Besides, after users swap their green credits for real trees, they can see the forest planted by Alibaba in the real-time photo album on the application.
Reference:
Christine, C. (2019, April 22). How Alipay Users Planted 100M Trees in China. Retrieved from https://www.alizila.com/how-alipay-users-planted-100m-trees-in-china/
UN Environment Programme. (n.d.). Chinese initiative Ant Forest wins UN Champions of the Earth award. Retrieved from https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/chinese-initiative-ant-forest-wins-un-champions-earth-award
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