The app’s main purpose is to make it fun and easy for individuals to reduce their GHG emissions. It was built with the belief that the more people reduce their carbon foot print, the stronger our capacity to help Mother Nature restore its balance. The app supports personal leadership by enabling users to take daily environment-friendly actions under six lifestyle categories: Food, Fashion&Electronics, Materials, Travel&Energy, Wellness, and Leadership.
The app has basic interactive features that keep users focused and informed about their 4ThePlanet actions. It “rewards’’ the users’ environment-friendly actions with stars (with no monetary value), that could be redeemed to plant trees. Two external organisations, One Tree Planted and Ecology Ottawa, provide trees at a fraction of the real cost of trees, thanks to their reliance on volunteers and donors. The app keeps users engaged with basic ongoing metrics on individual and community performance and tree planting progress. It also gives information on 22 environment related United Nations designated international days.
The app was developed by a psych-ecologist (a psychologist with work experience in the field of environment) who is the founder of GentleWays for OurPlanet. It is free and the first to be ad free and with no commercial goals whatsoever. It is one of the gifts that GentleWays for OurPlanet offers to help address the climate change crisis. GentleWays has committed to planting one million trees over the next ten years with its supporters.