The Accidental Forest: Help Grow the Devotive Grove

This year, I set out to make my company, Devotive, fully carbon neutral.

For years, our Brooklyn office has run entirely on green energy through a wind and solar exchange, but one major source of emissions remained: the travel required to film our educational and humanitarian documentaries around the world.

To close that gap, I partnered with Evertreen, an organization that plants and monitors trees around the globe, to offset our travel emissions. Together, we planted 1,111 trees in Madagascar.

Later in the year, as I prepared for my journey to Burning Man, I wanted to offset the impact of that experience as well. It’s no secret that the event carries a significant carbon footprint, and I was driving my car across the country to attend. I wanted to balance my journey by planting more trees and expanding the Devotive forest.

In the chaos of life and preparation leading up to the trip, I made a mistake. While selecting my tree-planting options on Evertreen’s site, I saw that they offered the ability to plant trees in Mexico, a country I’ve come to love deeply and where I now spend part of my time living and working. It felt like the perfect way to give back to my new home.

After returning from Burning Man, I checked my accounts and realized something had gone very wrong. Instead of planting trees at the discounted company rate I had secured, I had purchased them at the individual rate at a total cost of $24,000.

It was a shock. As a small business owner in pre-production on several documentary projects, that was not an expense I could easily absorb.

I took a breath, sat with it, and decided to consult the universe. I asked whether I should try to reverse the mistake or simply accept what had happened. The message I received was clear:

“Everything will come back to you. Trust the universe and stick with it.”

When I contacted Evertreen, they couldn’t refund the money, but they agreed to honor my payment at the company rate. So my $24,000 became a forest of 8,000 trees in Mexico.

All told, between Madagascar and Mexico, I have now planted 9,111 trees this year: enough to offset Devotive’s carbon footprint for nearly a decade. Coincidentally, Devotive turns ten years old in 2026.

Join me in planting this forest and beyond, let's show our love for our dear planet and plant some trees!

For every $3.33 donated, one tree is planted and I will send you a certificate for your gifted tree.

See more info on the forest here:

Devotive Evertreen Forest