ECO2 Forests President Martin Tindall didn’t start out as an environmentalist, but as his work for international companies had him heading around the globe, what he saw was one damaged environment after another. He began to realize there was a straightforward solution: create new forests.
In 2006, this insight led Tindall and his business partners to found ECO2 Forests, a progressive international forestation company focused on reforestation of previously damaged and deforested land and saving existing threatened forests. Using the company’s Global Forestry Plan, the company has implemented an innovative business model built on long-term sustainability.
The key to the company’s business model is the Kiri Tree. A rapidly growing, high carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestering tree, Kiri forests can be safely harvested for lumber every seven years without damaging the environment. Even more remarkably, the trees then automatically regenerate themselves from the stump, producing another harvestable forest in seven years. This steady supply of lumber helps protect old-growth forests which remain untouched, while each Kiri Tree eliminates 2.5 tons of C02 from the atmosphere. It also provides ECO2 Forests with two significant revenue streams: one from lumber and the other from carbon credits, both of which can be traded internationally.
Indigenous to China and Japan, the Kiri Tree can be grown worldwide. ECO2 Forests already has secured land to plant 29,000 acres in Australia, Vanuatu and the United States, and plans to cultivate more than a million and a half acres globally. “Problems like deforestation and rising CO2 levels are global concerns that require global solutions,” noted Tindall. “Whether you live in the U.S., Europe, Australia or the developing world, we all have to breathe the same air.”
Challenge. Establishing global operations presented a business challenges as well. Tindall began spending much of his time traveling between the company’s offices in Queensland, Australia, and Sacramento, Calif., in addition to scouting numerous other international locations for possible cultivation. ECO2 Forests’ other geographically dispersed employees had to rely on disparate, regional service providers for voice communications and Internet access. The resulting fragmentation and lack of business-class features made it difficult — and expensive — for the company’s global team to stay in touch.
Tindall began looking for a VoIP solution that would provide standardized, enterprise-quality communications for all employees. What he found, however, was that most VoIP solutions offered only limited features and lacked the mobile functionality he and the other ECO2 Forests employees needed for their iPhones. These needs were the primary drivers behind his decision to install Virtual Office Pro from 8x8 Inc.
“8x8 Virtual Office Pro not only provides a very strong suite of communication services, it also supports a number of add-on applications — including one for the iPhone,” said Tindall. “The pricing for these rich features was also very competitive. It was clear to me that using 8x8 Virtual Office Pro would deliver the most value for us.”
8x8 Virtual Office Pro provides a complete communications solution for ECO2 Forests, including phone service, online faxing, Web conferencing, call recording and other Web-based productivity tools.
