How It Works

The Buy Green sustainable gift cards are intended to give people another gift option for their sustainability conscious friends and family.

The idea is pretty unique (at least we think so!).
1

A customer purchases our sustainable gift cards

At the moment you can buy our cards from WH Smith and ASDA stores and in selected outlets online, however we are in talks with other sustainably minded retailers to get our cards in their stores ASAP.

A customer purchases our sustainable gift cards
2

The purchaser gives the gift card to their special one

Our FSC accredited, fully recyclable gift cards have all the information they will need to redeem their gift.

The purchaser gives the gift card to their special one
3

The lucky recipient comes online to this website to check out our projects

All our projects have been handpicked by us based on their contribution to aforestion or reforestation efforts or their contribution to global decarbonisation. All our options are either registered charities or accredited carbon offsetting projects.

The lucky recipient comes online to this website to check out our projects
4

They find their perfect match

Once they have selected which project is right for them they will receive a personalised thank you and be offered the opportunity to send a thank you back to their gifter.

They find their perfect match
5

Buy Green handle the rest

Every time a card is redeemed we allocate this to the specific project the customer chose. Payments are made to the relevant project chosen on a monthly basis and tracking of our payments is available on our website for transparency.

Buy Green handle the rest

Forestry Projects

All our forestry projects are registered charities aimed at either protecting established forests or planting new tree stocks. The Buy Green forestry fund is a carefully managed blend of the forestry charities available on our website allowing us to spread customer donations across all these worthy causes.

Carbon Offsetting Projects

All our carbon projects are either VERRA or Gold Standard accredited carbon offsetting projects. The Buy Green Carbon Fund balances customer contributions across each of our projects to ensure that each customer receives offsets sufficient to compensate for either 3 or 6 month of the average UK consumer’s carbon footprint depending on which card they are redeeming.

How projects and charities get the donated funds

If you have selected one of our forestry projects the process is easy. Every month we tally up all the donations made by customers redeeming their cards and we pass on the funds to each charity by their preferred method (usually bank transfer). For our carbon neutral cards the process is ever so slightly more complicated. As these projects are not actually charities, Buy Green purchases credits which need to be carefully accounted for and retired on our customers' behalf. To manage this we will keep a track of how many credits are being claimed via our gift card redemptions and every month we retire the correct number of tonnes. Its a bit of a balancing act and to ensure that we fulfil the right amount of credits to cover carbon neutrality for a UK adult, plus ensure that we are getting the right blend of projects to make the most positive impact, we may sometimes have to purchase slightly different projects from those shown on our project listing page. That being said we will always do our best to ensure that any changes are minimal and that there is always the same blend of nature, technology and community focused projects.