One tick at checkout. A native tree in the ground. Aotearoa, a little greener.
Every gift you send with We Love Local already does a fair bit of quiet good. It arrives on someone’s doorstep, makes their day, and puts money straight into the hands of small Kiwi producers. Now you can add one more thing to that list: a native tree, planted right here in Aotearoa.
At checkout, you’ll spot a new option to fund native tree planting. Add $2, $5 or $10 to your order, and that money goes towards real trees in the ground. Ten dollars funds one native tree. It takes a single tick, and you can skip it entirely if you’d rather not. No pressure, no guilt, just an easy way to leave the place a little greener while you’re sending something lovely.
Why we made the change
For a few years, our checkout offered a carbon offset through a service called CarbonClick. Plenty of you ticked the box, and we’re grateful you did. Earlier this year we discovered the integration had suddenly stopped working without us noticing. The connection went down sometime after August 2025, and for a window of orders the offsets you opted into were never actually processed. We weren’t comfortable leaving it there, so we’ve put it right and rethought the whole thing.
When we went looking for what to do instead, we kept coming back to the same idea. Offsetting carbon through international credit projects never felt quite like us. Planting native trees in New Zealand does.
Where your trees go
Trees That Count is a New Zealand conservation charity that funds native tree planting across the country. It grew out of the Project Crimson Trust, the people who have been protecting pōhutukawa and rātā since 1990, and launched as its own programme in 2016. Every dollar donated is matched to a real planting project run by community groups, schools, iwi and landowners.
What we like best is that our checkout reads the region your gift is heading to, so we can ask Trees That Count to plant your trees near where the box lands. Send a gift to Dunedin, help the planting happen closer to Otago. We gather up every donation and pass it on each quarter.
We’ve already made our first donation: $590, which funds 59 native trees across Aotearoa. Those trees will draw down around 13 tonnes of CO₂ over the next fifty years. Not a bad start for a tick box.
The ripple has more than one direction
A while back we wrote about the multiplier effect: the way a single gift box ripples outward through a dozen producers, their suppliers, their staff, and the towns they live in. One purchase, a surprising amount of local good.
Native trees add a new direction to that ripple. Your gift has always moved money through real communities. It also gives back through the 1% of every sale we donate to NZ charities via One Percent Collective. And now it can put native trees in the ground too. One box, several kinds of good at once, all of it staying right here in Aotearoa.
Give it a go
Next time you send a We Love Local gift, you’ll see the option at checkout. Add a tree if it feels right, or leave it. Either way, you’re already backing local makers with every box you send.
We think it’s a small change that adds up to something real over time. Thanks for being the kind of person who cares about where a gift goes, and what it leaves behind.
We Love Local is a Kāpiti-based gift box company supporting 200+ artisan producers across Aotearoa. Browse our gift boxes or learn more about our social mission.
