Our mission is to reduce 1GT of CO2 from the environment by funding direct investment in solar and forestry projects
Our Principles
We have three founding principles:
1
Our members should never pay extra to do good for the planet. All our products and our partnerships use the trail of commissions and rebates to fund projects rather than asking you for extra money.
2
Our members should have fun doing what they do while helping reducing global warming. We offer our platform across all kinds of merchants regardless of where they are at in their climate commitments.
3
We help reduce air pollution by directly investing in technologies that we know work today and scale.
With those principles in mind, the next challenges for us to solve were what products would enable us to harness the collective of everyone and make change at an unparalleled scale possible. The one thing that always struck us in our years of professional experience at Google and other companies, was how much employees, customers and partners cared about leaving the world a better place for the next generation. But how few platforms there were to actually help really channel that enthusiasm into action. Many companies have gift matching for charitable donations and a number of organizations help employees and their partners buy carbon offsets. But there was nothing that fit the bill with our three principles. In fact, all the offerings largely contradicted one if not all three principles.
And then the most critical question – with so many solutions to reduce CO2, which solutions would we really want to double down on to have the maximum climate impact for every dollar invested. We looked at all the solutions out there – for several years. And for better or worse, came to a few conclusions:
- We wouldn’t use carbon offsets or similar derivative products. That’s not to say there is no value in them, but after months of analysis, we just couldn’t hand on heart say that the projects they fund really wouldn’t have happened anyway (it’s called additionality).
- Reducing the amount of CO2 we put in the air is far better than removing what we put in. Bit like the old proverb, prevention is better than cure.
- Renewable energy, particularly solar, is truly remarkable. It costs less than all other forms of energy, has a boundless source of energy (the Sun) and actually creates jobs and energy independence. So, that’s what we spend the most part of our investment dollars on.
- Nature has invented the best carbon removal technology there is – trees. We might not get to carbon zero any time soon, so part of our portfolio supports tree growth to remove what is in the air.
And with those insights – activate the collective of employees, customers and partners of companies and double down on renewables and forestation – was born Dyme. A platform that:
- Enables companies to contribute to cleaning the air every time they give rewards to their employees, customers or partners;
- Enables employees to reduce their own footprint when they shop. And rather than a green premium, they get discounts automatically (no more coupon clipping!);
- Invests directly in solar energy projects and forestry here in America;
- Embeds the concept of helping reduce global warming in every financial product – whether fintechs building cool new apps, or payments, or investments, or merchants giving Dyme Dividends instead of discounts.
Just imagine this – a simple $100 gift card for almost any brand bought from Dyme, can reduce emissions the equivalent of driving 10 miles. And at no extra cost, so why would you not want to do that? (and if all those negatives threw you off, more simply said – it’s a total no brainer to buy gift cards through Dyme!)!
Now, multiply that impact by everyone and with every financial product – we can collectively create thousands of jobs, have cheaper energy and make sure no kid ever has to stay indoors, like I did, because of air pollution.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Take the first step today and join us!
Sunil Chandra
Founder and CEO
A letter from our founder:
Growing up, I was acutely aware of the impact of air pollution as an asthmatic. There were days as a child when the air was so thick with pollution from diesel cars and trucks that I’d have to stay indoors. Or days in winter when the combination of fog, cold and farmlands being cleared by burning them, would suffocate the city. That was before “climate change” was even coined as a term. And fast forward to the wildfires in Northern California, where our house was almost burned down, we couldn’t see more than a few yards in front of us because the air was thick with smoke and countless houses were tragically lost to the flames. It’s abundantly clear that we’re all better off with clean air, blue skies, clean rivers and oceans and kids that don’t have ailments because these aren’t true.
But if the problems are clear, the solutions seem as murky as the air that I inhaled growing up as a child. Things that are good for the planet often attract a “green premium” i.e. you have to pay extra. They often require totally changing the way we live or not changing and feeling bad about that – never a way to motivate change. And the words “climate change” invoke many debates amongst even those that believe that climate change is a challenge to be solved – is natural gas good or bad, should nuclear be part of the mix, do trees help, are carbon offsets really helping, are EVs better or worse because of batteries .. and more. Hence, we built Dyme – to make it easy for everyone to do the things they love, while simultaneously and effortlessly leaving the world a better place for our kids.