Hello everybody! Happy Earth Day!

I've been working on this project for the last two months and today I'm very proud to announce the Hive Reforestation Project.

My name is Gherardo Dini, I am 25 years old and I am the founder of the Hive Reforestation Project.
I have been interested in the world of Blockchain for about three years and because of that, in February 2018, I met Steemit.
Like many other Steemians, I was not very happy with the old "centralization" that characterized Steemit, so I was pleased to read about the Hard Fork to the Hive Blockchain and I want to give my sincere congratulations to all those who made this transition possible.

Now let me tell you a little bit about myself:

It is now widely known that the planet is experiencing an unprecedented climate crisis. Our lifestyle is no longer sustainable and a change is needed, starting from the energy policies of the various countries, up to the everyday life of every single citizen. I started thinking of what I could do to make my own lifestyle and the lifestyle of any person more sustainable, according to the famous phrase

"Be the change you want to see in the world"
Mahatma Gandhi

and I took action in this different ways :

1. Transforming the student residence that we own ( CONvictUS ) into an environmentally friendly residence.
2. Teaching lessons to students who live with us to sensitize them to the climate change.
3. Minimizing the use of mono-use plastic.
4. Creating a working group for beach cleaning ( Trashbuster )
5. By creating a travel site ( Treeurist ) affiliated with Booking, which allows you to plant up to 100 trees when you book a room. Before Covid-19 we managed to plant 500 trees and here's the proof

So I tried to do something with myself and now I've decided to bring the Hive community closer to this climate issue as well.

How?

By creating the first and only Hive Reforestation Project.

Why?

Just over last year we saw about 12 million hectares burn in the Amazon, 27 thousand hectares in Congo, over 8 million in the Arctic, 328 thousand in Indonesia and more than 5 million hectares in Australia, for a total of more than 25 million hectares burned.

To give you an idea, it burned more or less a territory as big as the whole Italy.

Planting trees is one of the easiest and most sustainable ways to positively affect the environment. We need trees now more than ever!
Trees are our lifeline to cleaner air and a healthier environment.
Here’s 7 reason on how trees make a difference:

1. Trees improve air quality by producing oxygen. They also store carbon, offsetting harmful byproducts of fossil-fuel burning.
2. They moderate the effects of sun and wind, and they clean the air by trapping dust, pollen and other pollutants.
3. Trees generate jobs and contribute raw materials for buildings, newspapers, books, etc.
4. They are renewable, biodegradable and recyclable.
5. They provide shelter and food for wildlife such as birds, squirrels and bugs.
6. Trees make people feel good. Workers are more productive when they see trees along their commute routes and from their office windows.
7. Landscapes that include trees help relax us, lower heart rates and reduce stress.

So… What is the Hive reforestation project?

Users participating in the project will have the opportunity to:

1. Create content related and not related to climate change and use our hashtag #HiveReforestationProject to let other users know that part of their reward will be used to plant trees.
2. Receive a comment to their post from @reforest with the number of trees planted after 24h from creation.
3. Verify weekly the number of trees that Hive Reforestation Project has helped to plant, with a certificate from our Tree-nation Partner
4. Share and raise awareness with other users with a blog post dedicated to our project.

How will it be possible for us to plant trees?

Simply by placing the @reforest account as beneficiary of your post rewards with a percentage of your choice.

How will @reforest's rewards be used?

The rewards we receive, generally divided 50% HBD and 50% HP, will be used as follows:
HIVE BACKED DOLLARS: entirely exchanged in FIAT currency and used to buy trees on Tree-nation.
HIVE POWER: 50% of these rewards will be kept on the profile to maintain the project, 50% will be powered-down in HIVE to buy more trees.

Who can guarantee that the trees will be planted and the rewards will not end up in someone else's pocket?

Thank God we're using the Blockchain!
We aim for maximum transparency and thanks to this platform you will be able to see the rewards received every day, so you can check the actual number of tokens and compare them with the number of trees planted.

Every week we will publish a post with:

1. Rewards collected divided into HBD and HP.
2. N° of Trees planted.
3. Reforestation project financed. ( Which can be chosen by the community itself )
4. Certificate from our partner Tree-nation.

Where and how will the trees be planted?

We have decided to rely on Tree-nation.com for tree planting, they have already proven their effectiveness by having partners such as Google, Nivea, Garnier and other large companies.
Thanks to them more than 5 million trees have been planted and we also want to make our contribution.
In addition, we have a personal profile showing the trees planted, in order to make our work more transparent and give anyone the possibility to check it anytime.
The price for each tree varies depending on the reforestation project that will be financed.
Every Monday we will make a post that will allow our community to decide which project to finance and which type of trees to plant. After two days we will verify the community's decision and use our rewards to buy trees from the chosen project.

I don't want to bore you too much, we will go into detail about every aspect of the project in other posts.

We would love your feedback about the project

and I'm convinced that, with your help, we will be able to make the Hive Reforestation Project a real success for the Hive Community and especially for our Earth.
Thanks for reading.

Gherardo Dini
@gherard0
Hive Reforestation Project Founder.