Jaime de Jaraíz. Smart Green Challenge: One Person, One Tree

President of LG Electronics Spain and Portugal

To explain the Smart Green Challenge, the central theme of his presentation, Jaime de Jaraíz wanted to tell us about his father, with whom he shared a name. The renowned painter made him realize that the legacy we leave in this world is the most important thing, and it’s not necessary to be famous or influential for it to be relevant: our best way to influence the world is through our family and loved ones. This made him rethink his life and realize that while he didn’t have the opportunity to leave behind a great body of artwork like his father did, he could contribute to society in another way. This is how this movement was born, with the goal of planting 47 million trees in Spain every year.

Our speaker firmly believes in the social responsibility of companies and, after a personal experience of climate change, he decided to focus his efforts on contributing to this cause. He spoke with his marketing team, and after initial ideas that largely eliminated plastic from offices and substantially reduced paper usage, they analyzed the best way to mitigate the harmful effects our planet is facing. They concluded that the solution was to plant trees: “Because trees are the only option humans have to massively absorb CO2 from the atmosphere on a global level.”

They began with a pilot program, where for every home appliance they sold in one of their distribution centers, they planted a tree. In two months, they planted 500 trees in Las Rozas, Madrid, and gained significant media coverage, which did not entirely convince our protagonist. What Jaime de Jaraíz wanted was to significantly influence the fight against climate change (which couldn’t be achieved with such a small planting), not to gain notoriety. Therefore, that year, they decided to celebrate LG Spain’s annual convention in Porto by planting trees: they managed to plant 4,500 trees. However, it caused a lot of frustration among employees who believed that many more trees could be planted. This motivated Jaraíz to look for new planting methods to expedite the process. That’s how they discovered the combination of drones with smart seeds, combined with an LG phone – this is the technology they currently use. With a single activity, they managed to reforest more than one and a half million trees. The next project is to plant over two and a half million trees in the Extremadura mountains next year, undoubtedly a significant step forward that the LG President still finds insufficient: “Without a doubt, two and a half million is better than 4,500 trees, but it’s still insignificant, it doesn’t change things.”

Therefore, they are now facing the big challenge: planting 47 million trees per year, one for each inhabitant of our country. For now, they have achieved the technical viability to develop the project, but they have been greatly hindered by administrative bureaucracy. They then decided to approach the smallest administrative unit with the authority to plant: local municipalities.

The greatest cost in implementing this project lies in labor. Municipalities would have to buy native trees and shrubs from each region (which cost less than 2 euros) and local residents could voluntarily participate by planting their own trees. This is expected to create a snowball effect where the number of plantations would grow exponentially year after year. For the project’s development, it would be crucial for the administration to establish the “Tree Mother’s Day,” to be celebrated over a weekend between October 15th and November 30th each year, motivating municipalities to promote this initiative: “Which municipality would claim to lack ecological awareness and refuse to participate in such an initiative?”

Regarding the economic aspect of the challenge, Jaraíz suggests that each person who plants a tree takes responsibility for its cost (around two euros approximately). The goal is to create a social movement of help that originates from people themselves, and it’s important for participants to pay for two reasons: to give it value and to make them aware that the money they invest is going directly to a common good.

As a way to generate publicity and awareness for the challenge, they have created the hashtag #unapersonaunarbol (#onepersononetree) and invited different personalities to join it. Thus, prominent business people, athletes, and artists have been able to experience firsthand the immense satisfaction that comes from contributing to society with a gesture that may seem so simple at first: “While they were planting the tree, they were happy, they looked like children. Many told me it was the first time they had done it.”

“There are studies that say if you give thanks, you are happier, and for me, planting a tree is that: giving thanks. This movement can be created, and that’s what we’re working on.” Jaraíz concluded with complete conviction.