About us

The people behind One Tree

In 2012 we were looking for a spa gift voucher, but were busy and wanted to buy the gift online. Through our research it was apparent that while many hotels, restaurants and spas promoted gift vouchers on their websites, not many had a facility to buy there and then. The benefits to the businesses issuing the vouchers were clear. Gift vouchers are a valuable source of revenue and bring in new clients, but they generate a good deal of admin and require staff overhead if the process is managed manually. An online shop and management system would increase income and time could be saved. This was the start of One Tree Software. Having worked for many businesses, from international corporations to smaller start-ups, we brought our combined knowledge of databases, marketing and web applications to create the One Tree Gift Voucher System.

Our commitment to the environment

Reducing our carbon footprint is no longer a nice-to-have ambition, it’s a necessity. While a digital business may not appear to cause a high level of damage to the environment, the servers that process the data use electricity. This is primarily generated from coal or gas fired power stations, which, of course, contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the Scandinavian research company, Sintef, estimates that the world’s data centres use 2% of all global energy produced. This is only likely to increase as our lives become more driven by apps and electronic devices. Vouchers and tickets may also be printed out on paper, so this too has an environmental impact.

Planting trees to offset our energy and paper use

Since energy use is inevitable to run a business, we are offsetting the CO2 produced by planting trees.  Approximately 10,000 pieces of paper can be manufactured from a single tree, and we’re planting 10 trees for every 10,000 vouchers that the One Tree System generates. This off-sets one tonne of carbon per tree planted. Some of the trees planted are purchased via www.carbonfootprint.com and we are also supporting a local environmental scheme in Bath.