Stories
PlantATreeUSA- Cindy Katz

PlantATreeUSA

 

Cindy's Clan

MOM OF FIVE TURNS REFORESTATION INTO A BUSINESS
 

Cindy Katz lives in New Jersey with her husband and posse of 5 small children. She home schools the kids each morning at her kitchen table. If you met Cindy, you'd size her up to be like any other young mother with a household to manage, and her cheery smile would win you over right away.

But there's more to Cindy than meets the eye. She's out to save the world, one tree at a time, and to rally businesses to join her. She's found that corporations will go green if it helps their bottom line.

Knowing that many corporations routinely give gifts to their clients, she devised a plan to capture those gifts in trees planted in the clients names. Calling her company Plant A Tree USA, she began visiting mortgage brokers, lawyers, even car dealerships.

With John Ginley of Wharton Mortgage

"If I buy one house, unless I’m a real estate investor, I’m probably not buying a house for another three, four or five years, so, if I’m happy with my mortgage broker, and it was great – they got me a good interest rate – I’ll probably talk about him for a week or two and then I’ll – I’d want to talk about other things. I can’t continue talking about my mortgage broker unless he’s my boyfriend. Now, this mortgage broker buys a tree as a thank you gift. We all know that promotional items, thank you gifts towards clients are used all the time. This is kind of a unique, green one, and this – one of the corporations says, we like this program because – and I had never, ever thought of it – they said, we like to stay in contact with the customers. If we’re in contact with them and we plant a tree, and we know that within two or three weeks we’re going to get the certificate, we know that we can contact them in a month from now and say, hey, did you get the certificate? Did you go on the website? We really appreciate the planet and we thank you for your business, etc. So, now I get the certificate from my mortgage broker. I hang it up on my wall because it’s very attractive, created by a graphic designer. And, now, I’m advertising my mortgage broker when people are coming over to my home and see this really bright, green plaque, personalized for me. And here’s this mortgage guy. So, it ends up helping the planet, helping the person who received it because they come back to the site and get educated, and it helps the mortgage broker because now he’s not just being talked about for a week or two. Now he’s up 24/7 on your wall."

Cindy and Corporate Client

When Cindy stopped in at her local Lexus dealer, she calculated the carbon output of a new Lexus to determine how many trees would offset the carbon used to build a new car. This helped round out the number of trees to buy for each Lexus sale. The dealer agreed to purchase trees as a bonus gift to the Lexus buyers. In addition to planting the trees, Cindy made a plaque that each buyer could take home and display. The plaques become conversation pieces, displayed in the buyers home or workplace, giving the dealer exposure and referrals.

Cindy with Reforestation Farmer Julie Viskup

Cindy has built alliances with reforestation projects in several midwestern states. When a client purchases trees in the name of one of their customers, the trees are planted through one of her allies. The trees are photographed periodically so that both her client and his customer can watch the trees grow by logging in to Cindy's website, where the photos are posted.

Plant A Tree USA is not a charity organization. Cindy believes that businesses can and should be contributing community members, and she's teaching companies to believe it too.

"When you’re a nonprofit, you’re asking people to give you a handout. You’re at the bottom of the list. ... We are taking the green issue and becoming the Oprah or the Paul Newman or the Bill Gates, who are for profit and do wonderful things with their profit. But they could not be powerful or meaningful or world changing without being specifically for profit. Nor could they have amassed the amount of financial wealth in order to do the things they’re doing. Nor could have they have received that same kind of prominence in today’s social economic structure of people listening to them. What moves the world, what moves your opinion, what moves your wallet - is business."

Proud Treeplanters

Cindy says, "What do businesses need? Businesses need growth. Businesses need referrals. Businesses need repeat customers. Businesses need loyalty. When they’re making more money because they’re green, they will want to be even more green, more eco-responsible."

To invite Cindy's Plant A Tree program into your workplace, go to

www.PlantATreeUSA.com