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When we started, even managing to gain as many as 10 partner businesses seemed like a huge achievement that would be a long time coming. Now, a mere 3 years later, a new milestone of 60 CoolPartners is about to be reached. Unbelievably, we have not needed to engage the services of sales or marketing teams to promote what we do, and there has been absolutely zero in the way of paid advertising. We have planted in excess of 50,000 trees to date on our own land and are hoping to double this in the next 18 months.

What is unique about Cloudforests and what do you think makes it compelling?

I think what really inspires our partners is that our initiative is not just about putting their name to part of an existing forest; it really does offer a chance to visit our sites, plant trees and make a personal difference to the environment. Our partners can visit the site and return to spend time here as often as they like. Some businesses even run events from the site, and there are additional opportunities to sponsor bird boxes, bat boxes, and to get involved in other elements of conservation. The scheme has brought businesses, partners, and customers together and has seen them all offer their commitment to the creation of a sustainable future.

You also pride yourself on having a community focus. How does Cloudforests directly benefit local people and businesses?

Cloudforests has been welcomed into the local community because we bring business to local establishments such as hotels, restaurants and shops. We don’t simply plant forests and disappear; we’ve created natural habitats that people can visit at any time all year round. For this reason we are often the preferred bidder for local land because the community will gain not only from the conservation work that we undertake, but also from the custom of the people that we bring to the area.

We also regularly involve ourselves in the local community, even sponsoring sporting events and helping to fundraise for various initiatives and projects. We want to increase our role locally and will be looking into more opportunities to engage with the public, such as enabling small businesses to run from our sites, selling honey or fruit that they have grown on our land.

Finally, what’s next for the Cloudforests project?

While we work with our CoolPartners to help support them from a sustainability viewpoint, we also relish the chance to get them together to network and share ideas from business to business. Many partners are continuing to help and advise us as part of an almost symbiotic relationship, imparting knowledge or offering their technologies or expertise to benefit our work.

Elsewhere we are in discussions with Plastic Bank, an organisation that specialises in the collection and recycling of plastic to prevent it from ending up in our oceans, to learn where we might be able to help. We have also just set out on an exciting new endeavour with Stepping Stone Forests, a volunteer-led project which creates small, dense, biodiverse woodlands in urban settings, such as within the grounds of schools and businesses, using native trees and shrubs. We will be working with Stepping Stone Forests to develop 15 micro forests in the next 12 months, to seek corporate sponsorship and to assist them in ramping up operations for the next planting season.

We very much look forward to continuing to grow Cloudforests and make positive changes to the world around us, bringing dedicated and likeminded people together through a shared drive and determination to make our world greener and more sustainable.