Overview

'We'll Plant One Tree For Every Pet Picture' refers to a viral Instagram Story campaign that invited users to post a picture of their pet, and in return, a tree would be planted. The campaign saw millions of users post pet photos, but to many users, it was unclear who started the campaign and who would plant the trees. After the campaign went viral in early November 2021, a charity organization called "Plant a Tree Co" claimed responsibility for the campaign, saying they quickly deleted their original post after they realized they didn't have the resources to plant an ever-growing number of trees.

Background

On November 7th, 2021, the Instagram^[4] account plantatreeco posted an announcement on its page claiming that it would plant a tree for every picture of a user's pet that was shared on Instagram under the campaign. The post was allegedly deleted just 10 minutes after, later noted by the company for its inability to meet the amount of posts. That same day and in the following days, Instagram users began posting pictures of their pets on their stories along with a sticker that promised one tree would be planted for every pet photo posted, along with an invitation for other users to add their own (example shown below).

Developments

As the campaign spread and the number of participants reached the millions, social media users shared jokes and expressed doubts that the promise of the campaign would be fulfilled.^[2][3] On TikTok, user @jonarfuckle posted a sketch about the campaign on November 8th, 2021, gaining over 244,000 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below, left). User @j8r3d posted a sketch as well that day, gaining over 100,000 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).

Twitter user @SabrinaBabySlut posted a video on November 7th joking about the "girl who made the 'post a photo of ur pet and i’ll plant a tree,'" gaining over 380 retweets and 2,300 likes in two days (shown below).

the girl who made the “post a photo of ur pet and i’ll plant a tree” planting over half a million trees rn pic.twitter.com/gpcKsk33CN

— ✨𝔻𝕠𝕝𝕞𝕚𝕠𝔾𝕚𝕣𝕝𝕩𝕠 (Baybladeslutxo era)✨ (@SabrinaBabySlut) November 8, 2021

Plant A Tree Co. Admission

On November 8th, 2021, the Instagram account Plant a Tree Co, a nature-focused and charity-based account, admitted to first posting the sticker, noting that they deleted their original post 10 minutes after posting upon realizing they would be unable to fulfill the promise of their campaign.^[1] The post read:

We posted the new “Add Yours” story as a fun tree planting campaign where we can show off our awesome pets! We immediately realized the post would grow too big and that we didn’t have the resources to plant that many trees, so we deleted it 10 minutes later. Even though we deleted it, the stories continued to spread out of our control. Our credit for the post was also removed, because of what seems like an @instagram bug. We want to use this awareness for lasting impact, so we created this fundraiser. It is raising money towards @treesforthefuture which is an organization that we love, who is dedicated to planting trees. WE ARE NOT AFFILIATED WITH @treesforthefuture, we are simply raising money through this Instagram fundraiser which will directly go to them, so that they can use it to plant trees. Please share this post and the fundraiser on your story, and tag all your friends, celebrities, and @instagram so they can see this and so we can ACTUALLY plant 4 million trees.

Investigation Into Plant A Tree Co

On November 9th, 2021, freelance journalist Patrick Marlborough posted a thread investigating Plant a Tree Co, concluding that the organization was a scam with a business model to sell necklaces in exchange for supporting charitable causes, but there was no way to tell if the company backed up their word (shown below).^[4] He discovered that the company had been around since 2019 and was accused of being a scam when they attempted a similar trick by supporting Black Lives Matter and the Australian Bush Fires. He cited FakeWebsiteBuster's^[5] research into Plant A Tree Co, who deemed the site "likely fake." The Instagram account "Exposing Insta Scams"^[6] first accused Plant A Tree Co of being a scam on May 25th, 2019, writing, "The website says nothing about planting trees. The picture of a tree is a random stock photo you can find by searching tree on google."

Search Interest

External References