Pond & lake restoration
Silt removal, bund repair, natural filtration beds and native aquatic planting. 80+ water bodies revived, each one recharging groundwater for the villages around it.
80+ ponds restored
Offset what you emit
Your family emits carbon every year. Plant the trees that take it back.
Find out how many tonnes of CO₂ your household puts into the air, and how many native trees it takes to absorb them. Then fund exactly that many — planted, geo-tagged and cared for in India by the team behind 80 restored water bodies.
- water bodies restored
- 80+water bodies restored
- urban forests planted
- 6+urban forests planted
- Jal Chaupal village assemblies
- 100+Jal Chaupal village assemblies
- awards for our work
- 15+awards for our work
USD
Your $75 plants 50 trees — about 1.05 tonnes of CO₂ absorbed each year once they mature.
$1.50 funds one native sapling plus three years of care. SayEarth is a registered Indian public charitable trust.
Founded by Ramveer Tanwar, the Pond Man of IndiaRecognised on Mann Ki Baat by the Prime Minister of IndiaBrand Ambassador, Swachh Bharat Mission, Ghaziabad
How it works
Three steps, no guesswork
- Step 1
Measure
Answer six questions about your home, your car, your flights and your food. The calculator gives you a yearly CO₂e figure for the whole household, broken down by source.
- Step 2
Fund
We convert that figure into a tree count at 21 kg of CO₂ absorbed per tree per year, add a 15% survival buffer, and price it at $1.50 per tree including three years of care.
- Step 3
Follow
Your trees go into a named planting site in northern India. You get the GPS location, species list, and photographs from the ground — at planting, and again after the first monsoon.
Our work
We do not only plant trees. We bring whole ecosystems back.
Urban forests
Dense native plantations on wasteland using the Miyawaki method — roughly ten times faster growth and thirty times denser canopy than conventional planting.
6+ forests created
Awareness & advocacy
Jal Chaupals bring villagers, officials and schoolchildren to the water's edge to decide together how a pond is used. Over 100 held, plus the Selfie With Pond campaign.
100+ campaigns
Before, and after
Six sites in Uttar Pradesh, photographed from the same spot.
Our leadership
Ramveer Tanwar
Founder — the Pond Man of India
Ramveer grew up in a village in Greater Noida watching the ponds he swam in turn into rubbish dumps. He trained as a mechanical engineer, took a corporate job, and quit it to start cleaning those ponds himself with whoever would show up on a Sunday.
He founded SayEarth to do that work at scale. He created Jal Chaupals — open village assemblies at the water's edge — so restoration decisions are made by the people who live with the consequences. His work has been recognised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Mann Ki Baat and by the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. He has been appointed Brand Ambassador of the Swachh Bharat Mission in Ghaziabad and district coordinator of Bhu Jal Sena, the state groundwater force.
Keep it going
Two ways to give more than once
Offset every month, automatically
Your footprint is annual, so spreading the offset across twelve months costs less at once and gives our planting teams something they rarely have: predictable funding they can hire and plan against. $25 a month plants roughly 200 trees a year. Change or cancel it yourself any time.
Offset your company
We run named corporate forests, employee plantation days and CSR-reportable restoration projects with annual survival audits. Tell us your headcount, your emissions figure or your target and we will send a scoped proposal with cost per tonne and a site shortlist.
Email trees@sayearth.orgQuestions
Before you give
SayEarth is a registered Indian public charitable trust founded by Ramveer Tanwar, known across India as the Pond Man. We restore degraded ecosystems: dead ponds and lakes brought back to life, wastelands turned into dense native forests, and the communities around them trained to keep them alive. We work across Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Uttarakhand.
About 55 native trees absorb one tonne of CO2 per year once established, at a conservative 21 kg per tree per year. A typical three-person household in the United States emits 20 to 25 tonnes a year, which works out to roughly 1,100 to 1,400 trees. Our calculator does this arithmetic for your household in particular.
In and around the water bodies and wastelands we restore in northern India. We plant native species using the Miyawaki method, which grows dense multi-layer forest roughly ten times faster than conventional planting. Every site is geo-tagged. Nothing is planted on land we cannot return to.
Your donation covers three years of care, not just a sapling in a hole. Local caretakers from the neighbouring village are paid to water, weed and replace losses. We plant a 15 percent buffer over what we promise, because some saplings will not make it, and we would rather over-deliver.
SayEarth holds Indian 80G registration, which benefits donors filing taxes in India. If you file in the United States or the EU, a gift made directly to SayEarth is not deductible in your country. Write to donations@sayearth.org before giving if a deduction matters to you and we will tell you honestly which route works for your jurisdiction.
Yes. We run CSR plantation drives, employee volunteering days, and named corporate forests with annual survival reporting. Write to trees@sayearth.org with your headcount and your target and we will send a scoped proposal.
Carbon calculator
How much CO₂ does your household actually emit?
Six questions, no email required. Estimates use published emission factors for grid electricity, natural gas, petrol vehicles, aviation and diet. Treat the result as a good approximation, not an audit.
880 kWh / month
Look at the kWh figure on your last bill.
45 therms / month
Roughly 45 therms is a typical winter-averaged US household. Slide to 0 if you heat with electricity only.
200 mi / week
8 hours / year
A round trip New York–London is about 15 hours. Two short domestic hops is about 5.
Your household emits
28.5tonnes CO₂e / year
That is 9.5 tonnes per person. The global average is about 4.7.
- Home electricity3.90 t
- Heating & gas2.86 t
- Driving3.64 t
- Flying4.56 t
- Food6.30 t
- Everything else you buy7.20 t
To absorb that much CO₂ every year you need
1,559 trees
At 21 kg absorbed per tree per year, plus a 15% survival buffer.
Or spread it out: about $195 a month.