Ant Forest, a mini-app on Alipay, plants trees for users when they make greener choices in daily consumption.
Instead, behind the hit go-green initiative is Ant Financial, a subsidiary of Alibaba – the technology giant that turned China into today’s e-commerce and food delivery powerhouse, but which in the process also accelerated the country’s trash problem.
Ant Forest, a mini-app that lives on the Alipay platform, makes an irresistible proposition: If users opt for the greener option when shopping or for transportation, the firm will plant trees on their behalf, basically promising they can do good for the environment through their consumption.
The “carbon wallet” works by collecting data from partner firms and the user’s own smartphone, then rewarding choices – such as walking and cycling (instead of taking a cab) and paying for utility and other bills using Alipay – with energy points.
Collect a certain number of points and they can be redeemed for a real tree, planted by Alipay’s local partners as part of reforestation efforts in places such as Inner Mongolia and Gansu. Users can also see satellite and real-time images of the saxaul and Scots pine nurseries through the app.
The game-like app, which has features such as leaderboards and the ability to steal friends’ points, has hooked some 400 million users since it was launched in 2016, said a spokesman – more than the combined populations of the United States and Britain.
Collectively, users’ energy savings – a measurement developed by an independent third party – have resulted in some 55.5 million trees being planted, reducing emissions by more than 3 million tonnes, he said.
While nominally a corporate social responsibility programme, the tree-planting initiative aligns closely with Beijing’s stated goal of building a 4,500km-long “Green Great Wall” that stretches across its northern frontier to prevent the Gobi Desert from advancing.
The state’s greening efforts were vindicated earlier last month (Feb), when US space agency Nasa said satellite data collected over 20 years showed that China had made an “outsized contribution to the global greening trend”, and is the undisputed world leader in greening efforts.
More than 40% of China’s greening efforts in the last two decades came from protecting and expanding forests, and even outstrips the increase in land used for food production, the agency noted.
The initiative is also a good public relations initiative for Alibaba, with users praising Ant Forest for democratising tree planting.
News commentator Tian Si’er said Ant Forest’s allure lies in making a person feel like he is actively helping the environment, without having to spend real time or money, or actually doing something to curb the consumption that leads to global warming.
The initiative has not come cheap: Ant Financial chief executive Eric Jing said more than 500 million yuan (S$100 million) had been spent by Alibaba as of last year, with most of it going to plant trees. He said 500 million trees are projected to be planted in the next five years, which means costs could go up by nearly 10 times.
But it is not slowing down. Last month (Feb), it announced that its fast-growing Hema chain of brick-and-mortar grocery stores will become part of Ant Forest. Consumers who opt to collect their groceries themselves rather than have them delivered will get bonus energy points.
Alibaba expects this effort to reduce the usage of plastic bags by 12.77 million bags this year, and comes on the back of a new government guideline for the delivery industry last month to reduce packaging waste and increase recycling.
According to China’s State Post Bureau, the booming express delivery industry used about 17.9 billion plastic bags, 8.6 billion cardboard boxes and 330 million rolls of adhesive tape in 2016.
There is speculation that Alibaba’s ambitions are to create a universal carbon wallet, which may one day lead to a consumer-led, global carbon trading market.
Experts like Paulson Institute associate director Phylicia Wu said that while questions remain about issues like the app’s incentive structure, it is undeniable that Alibaba has been a game-changer in developing a way to make personal, environmentally-friendly decisions both easy and enjoyable.
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Source: The Straits Times, 5 March 2019