In 1985, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the American outdoor recreation retailer Patagonia, pledged that his company would donate one per cent of its sales to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment. Since then, the outdoor retail giant has given $140 million to domestic and international grassroots environmental groups.
Edward Allen wanted to be like Patagonia.
Born and raised in Sheffield, England, Allen– today commonly known in the community through his business, Cochrane Drum Tutor– has always been passionate about the environment. For years he had been trying to think of a practical way to make a difference in the fight against environmental devastation.
As his drum tutoring business took off, Allen thought up an idea; he could take a portion of the net profits he made from his work and give it to advocacy groups that were dedicated to restoring the environment.
“I was intrigued by the idea of what we could do in our own little way,” Allen said. Allen’s initiative is called ‘Sticks to Branches’. For every lesson Allen teaches, he covers the cost to plant two trees. At the end of every fiscal quarter Allen tallies up how many tutoring sessions he’s done and then gives the money to a forest restoration and tree planting company called Replant.
Founded by Jonathan Clark, Replant is a prominent reforestation group that acts as official stewards for forested areas in Eastern Canada, and works contracts to reforest areas cut by West Fraser.
In 2022, the first year of ‘Sticks to Branches’, the initiative planted 1,004 trees. The next year it was 1,600. In 2024 it planted 2,300. According to the Sticks to Branches website, which collected data from Replant, Tree Canada, and the Carbon Fund, 1,000 tree saplings can be planted in a single acre, and each tree captures 180 kilograms of carbon over its lifetime.
At that rate, Allen stated on his website that the trees the initiative helped to plant in 2022 captured 180 tonnes of carbon, equalling enough to offset the effects of driving a car around the equator 16 times. Enough trees were planted in 2023 to offset the carbon released from driving from Cochrane to St. John’s 90 times.
Although it may seem impressive that a single initiative funded by drum tutoring lessons could do this, Allen knows that the carbon capture offsets of planting trees offers only a marginal improvement to the greater scale of ecological devastation caused by climate change.
“I think that in these times, people have grown up in an era of global warming,” he said. “And I think it’s easy for people to throw their hands up and say, ‘Well it’s all the fault of big oil, it’s the fault of China.’ We have to show leadership within our own communities and do what we can on a personal level with the hope that it’ll materially do something.”
Allen is determined to help make a bigger impact–if not through his own work, than through advocating for larger causes. One such example is the search engine Ecosia, which Allen uses.
Ecosia is a search engine that uses the same backend data as Google or Bing and funnels its users to the same search results. The only difference is that unlike Google or Bing, Ecosia uses the money it makes from ad sales to pay for reforestation efforts. According to its own website, Ecosia, through people using its search engine, has been able to pay for the planting of over 234 million trees around the world.
“That’s how we need to do this,” Allen said. “Bloody hell, if we plant enough [trees] it’ll make a difference. A bit of this and a bit of that and we’ll end up making a material difference.”
It’s through many small efforts that marginal change can be recognized, Allen believes. It’s not the multi-millions that Patagonia gives, but Sticks to Branches is an initiative in the Patagonia mould.
Yvon Chouinard, the Patagonia founder, famously stated on his company website: “The capitalist ideal is that you grow a company and focus on making it as profitable as possible. Then, when you cash out, you become a philanthropist. We believe a company has a responsibility to do that all along…for the sake of the planet.”
