Save the trees!

We grew up surrounded by mountains and minutes away from the ocean. We could go on hikes for breakfast and watch sunsets on the beach. Our heart has always belonged to the great outdoors, and it will always be!

We continue making adjustments to our brand and business model! We feel like Hamaka will thrive through an endless transformation. The more we educate ourselves and grow as individuals, the better and stronger our Creativity Lab would become, which makes us super excited about the future!

We have a little green notebook where we keep track of our personal and professional bucket list, ideas and goals. Some materialize, some get forgotten, and some continue brewing until the time is right. Long before we started working with print publications, we wrote: "Save the trees," but we didn't know how or where to begin. We could just remember the mountains back home burning every year to kick start the dry season–acres and acres of land down to ashes. This year, we stopped thinking and started doing. It sounds cheesy, but there's no better time to start than today, even if it is in a very small way!

From now on, we will plant ten trees per hour of photography services billed and one tree per item sold through our website, which means that each of our future publications will contribute to the reforestation of endangered land! All possible through our business partnership with One Tree Planted.

We are also committing to use only 100% post-consumer waste paper to print our books and source it as close to home as possible. We are aware of the implications of print media. There are not many recent statistics on the topic, but several studies have compared the impacts of reading paper books vs e-readers.

Down the road, we hope to organize planting events locally, get our hands dirty, and be able to see firsthand the impacts of our reforestation efforts.

We know everything has an impact. We contribute to climate change in many ways within our business and personal life, from using electronic equipment to sending emails and inquiring through search engines. The Information and Communications Technology sector accounts for roughly 3–3.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The digital world has a tremendous footprint—all without mentioning shipping, sourcing raw materials, agriculture, communications, manufacture, disposal of electronics and the fact that we’re living organisms.

We also partnered with Bullfrog Power to support the growth of renewable energy in Canada and offset our energy consumption in the meantime, while we keep dreaming about one day moving into a property where we can design a more sustainable studio for ourselves– to grow our own food, manage our water and power our lights through solar panels.

It is impossible to live an entirely eco-friendly modern life, but every little thing we do today creates a ripple effect that will affect the future of humans on Earth. These are our first steps, in an endless journey of educating ourselves and taking little bits of action.

A few weeks ago we saw everyone celebrating Earth Day with optimistic messages, outdoor photos and pretty illustrations. We decided not to post about it because Earth Day should not be celebrated just one day every April. Earth Day is every day, and we must do little things within our day-to-day operations and personal lives to walk the talk year round! Don’t just do it for the post, do it from the heart! If you're not aware by now, Earth can easily thrive without humans, but we can't certainly survive without our beautiful Mother Earth on our side!

Trees matter… big time! If you don’t believe us, believe the researchers at TED in this lovely 5-minute video: What happens if you cut down all of a city's trees? - Stefan Al