GCash Forest green heroes prevent 500 million grams of carbon emissions

Keyboard warriors have somehow had a bad rep, but there are times when it’s a good thing to let your fingers do the fighting—especially when it could save the only home you know. 

GCash users who have tapped into GCash Forest, the personal carbon tracker within the mobile app, have helped avoid carbon emissions by adopting more eco-conscious lifestyles. Since its launch in June, GCash Forest counts more than 300 million grams of carbon emissions prevented through green actions monitored by the GCash app.

“Taken together, the simple changes we make in our daily lives—such as walking instead of driving, going paperless, cultivating our own backyard garden, recycling and upcycling—make a difference to our planet,” Mynt’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Manguera said.

There are now more than 933,000 users of GCash Forest, and they earn green energy points whenever they choose actions that would mean less carbon emissions. These points let them plant a virtual tree in GCash Forest, which grows with every green activity. 

When a GCash user earns enough points, or grams of carbon emission prevented, GCash will plant a real native tree for them at the Ipo watershed in Bulacan, a major source of Metro Manila’s water. A yakal tree requires 20,560 grams of carbon emissions prevented which is actually how much carbon it sequester after a year of growth. 

To make earning green energy easier and more fun, GCash added social features that will make sustainable living a community effort. GCash users can invite their friends through the mobile app and their social media accounts to join them in GCash Forest. They can have a friendly competition to top the leaderboards they see in their GCash Forest on who could plant a tree first, and they can steal green energy from each other. 

“We want to enable as many Filipinos as possible to become green heroes, so we found ways to create a community of GCash Forest users through added social features,” Manguera said.

GCash Forest targets to plant 365,000 trees in 365 days to help restore the diminishing forest cover at the Ipo watershed, a protected area. 

“Through GCash Forest, we want more people to understand the value of trees in our fight against climate change. The amount of carbon that we prevent from being released into the atmosphere urgently matters. That’s why GCash encourages people to continue changing their lifestyles, and in effect, see the change they've made through the trees planted in Ipo Watershed.” Manguera said. 

Carbon is the greenhouse gas mainly responsible for global warming. According to the Global Climate Risk Index 2019, the Philippines is the fifth most affected country by climate change in the last two decades until 2017.