German manufacturer plants trees for minutes & meters exercised

Last year, Viessmann, a German manufacturer of heating, industrial and refrigeration systems, invited its employees to exercise as part of a climate conservation initiative. The more people jogged or swam, the more trees the company donated for reforestation projects, with a total of 150,000 trees planted as a result.

This week, Viessmann restarted their #ViMove for Climate challenge and opened it up to everyone. Signing up is easy; people can log on with a Google account, or their Viessmann email address if they're an employee. They then either connect their ViMove account to a Garmin fitness tracker, or upload screenshots of exercise data collected using other apps. The amount of exercise required depends on which of twenty activities the user selects: one tree is planted for every 1 km walked, for example, or for 12 minutes of Pilates or 20 minutes of snowboarding.

Since Viessmann is in the business of heating and refrigeration, it's closely linked to the CO2 emissions that reforestation projects are meant to absorb. Still, we're all in favor of getting people to exercise and rewarding them in a way that does the planet good! One for your own organisation to be inspired by? Extra points for strongly communicating that everyone's personal health is connected to that of our environment 💚