Instagram Food has been inundated over the past few days with posters promising to plant trees in exchange for users posting pictures of their pets on the social media platform.
Source: Instagram
The viral trend has seen users post photos of their animals accompanied by a poster with the caption: «We will plant one tree per pet photo.» The sticker, a new feature on Instagram, invited users who viewed each post to add their own photos of their pets.
By the time of writing, it is estimated that nearly five million people have shared the poster with photos of their furry friends in the hopes of doing something good for the environment.
These types of Like & Share campaigns have been around for several years. In 2019, a small green tree became one of the most popular Instagram photos of all time when a Canadian sustainable clothing brand promised to plant one tree in West Papua for every ten likes received.
But what about this case? Would this huge collection of photographs of good boys and girls planting the same amount of trees?
The answer is ambiguous.
First, looking at who actually promised to plant trees: There is no organization named on the label, and Instagram has confirmed it’s not behind the campaign.
A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Instagram, said: the magazine which – which:
Like all other ‘Add Yours’ sticker series, he started it with a standalone Instagram account – not Instagram.
Instead, the «we» behind «We’ll Plant One Tree Per Pet Picture» is a company called Plant A Tree Co.
The organization took to Instagram to say it was their idea, after the initial confusion over who exactly had promised to plant these trees. The post said that they deleted the poster once they started re-sharing it quickly.
Source: Instagram
The company, whose main business appears to be selling necklaces, explained:
«We realized right away that the post was going to grow too big and that we didn’t have the resources to plant that many trees, so we deleted it after 10 minutes.»
They claim that the poster continued to «spread out of control» and that their company’s name was removed from the poster «due to what appears to be an Instagram bug.»
the magazine He realizes that this is something the social media platform refutes.
Will my cat’s picture plant a tree?
This is a good question. Plant a Tree Co. said it does not have the resources to plant the millions of trees needed to match the number of pet poles.
Instead, the company asked its followers to tag famous and influential people and Instagram itself, and donate to the fundraiser it created «so we can actually plant 4 million trees.»
The company hasn’t explained how the money is raised or managed, and its website doesn’t contain very little information about what, when, where and how they plant trees.
They claim to have planted 6,500 trees so far but again there is no indication where, how or who.
Plant A Tree Co. website (now removed)
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20211109175346/https://www.plantatreeco.com/
It appears that their main business according to their website is selling contracts with slogans like Free Spirit and Good Vibes Only. Plant a Tree claims that each contract sold funds the planting of a single tree and its website states that its goal is to plant one million trees by the end of 2021.
the magazine Contacted Plant a Tree to ask how they are planting trees and for more information about their operations but have not yet received a response.
There is some information about the company available online. The search shows that their domain name is registered in May 2019 With Florida, America is listed as the registered address.
Source: https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_fl/L19000178770
Not-for-Profit Business Monitoring Agency The Better Business Bureau states that plantatreeco.com is registered to a company called Plant a Tree LLC. cross with Florida Department of Corporations In Boca Raton, Florida, the same business address appears.
The Enterprise Agent (the person required by law to accept the company’s legal documents) is listed as Zackaria Saadioui. Saadioui is listed as having the same business address.
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The only Instagram account that Plant a Tree follows is the username zjsaadioui and the account name Zack Saaidioui.
plantatreeco Followers
The 23-year-old describes himself Online as a «Major in Computer Science with a Minor in Innovation from the University of Florida with a background in Entrepreneurship.»
did not respond to the magazineMultiple attempts to contact him to confirm his role in the business or how it is run but Instagram in his name says he is the founder of Plant a Tree, as well as another parking company called Prked. According to records, he was removed from the position of tree planting officer last year.
Back in 2019 claimed in Youtube Show He earns $5,300 (about 4,600 euros) per month through several different methods. He describes e-commerce as «the simplest and cheapest way possible to start a business» and stresses the importance of marketing.
«Without marketing you will never succeed in this racket,» he says.
according to The best office work, four complaints were made to them about «planting a tree» including a customer who paid but did not receive an item, long shipping times and the company not responding to emails.
The company has a prior form of pledging to take action in return for helping users of its posts go viral. in 2020, I promised To donate one dollar to the NSW Rural Fire Service in Australia during one of the country’s worst bushfire seasons on record, for every 100 people who followed and reposted the company’s post.
The company claimed to have donated $3,000 (€1,950) to RFS. However, posts promising to donate money are no longer on their Instagram feed. the magazine They contacted RFS who told us they were looking into their donation history and would respond.
At the time of writing, neither the company nor Zack Al-Seawi have responded to questions about how and where they intend to plant the promised trees.
He spoke to NBCnews.com on Tuesday cast doubts online about «creating trends around false promises.»
“I understand where they come from, because we have made unintended mistakes in the past,” El Saadiwi said. “We took it up and stopped the post and said it would be impossible to cultivate.”
At the time of writing, Plant a Tree Co’s Instagram claims to have raised €25,473 of its €866,620 goal in fundraising to help plant trees.
Again, no info on how to keep or spend the money or where and how the trees will be planted – we’ll have to wait and see if your cute pic gets a tree in the ground after all.
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