What is the plant a tree for every pet picture trend on Instagram? Who is behind it and will trees be planted?

If you've been on Instagram recently you may have noticed people sharing pictures of their four legged friends to their stories along with a sticker that says, “We’ll plant one tree for every pet picture.”

The trend has taken off big time, with over 4 million people sharing pictures of their pets, but the origin of the sticker was unknown, until now.

The company behind it have came forward, but will be they be planting the trees they promised?

Who is behind this trend?

The company behind this trend are an environmental organisation called PlantATreeCo.

Their aim is to plant one million trees by the end of 2021 and the sticker was a way of them raising awareness and support for this pledge.

But they didn't realise how fast it would take off.

PlantATreeCo said, “We immediately realised the post would grow too big and that we didn’t have the resources to plant that many trees, so we deleted it 10 minutes later.”

But even though they had deleted the post, the sticker continued to be shared, however their credit for the sticker was also removed.

In response PlantATreeCo have posted an explainer to their Instagram account and have asked that people share this to their stories.

They have also that Instagram re-add their credit to the campaign.

Will they plant any trees?

In their Instagram statement PlantATreeCo explained that they didn't have the resources to plant four million trees.

Instead they have set up a fundraiser to raise money towards planting trees.

They said, “We want to use this awareness for lasting impact, so we created this fundraiser. It is raising money towards @treesforthefuture which is an organisation that we love, who is dedicated to planting trees.”

What has Instagram said?

Instagram have reiterated that the trend was not started by them but have commented on how successful this shows the app can be.

Instagram said ‘the we’ll plant one tree for every pet picture’ trend shows the power of the Instagram community to raise awareness on important topics”.

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