How this dating app is making millennials adopt environment consciousness as a ‘couple goal’

Love is in the air, but the air we breathe is often hazardously polluted.

As per a 2019 report by Health Effects Institute, particulate matter (PM) pollution was considered the third important cause of death in 2017, and this rate was found to be highest in India. Air pollution was considered to cause over 1.1 million premature deaths in 2017 in India, of which 56 percent was due to exposure to outdoor PM2.5 concentration and 44 percent was attributed to household air pollution.

Dating app TrulyMadly has come up with an initiative called ‘Forever Garden’ to ensure the air we breathe is clean. Started in 2021, the initiative aims to empower environmentally-conscious millennial couples in creating a greener planet by adopting and nurturing ‘love’ trees.

Apart from helping users ‘Find your Forever’, the platform is also giving a green take to the trend of ‘couple goals’ by helping couples adopt a cluster of trees near the place of their residence.

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The idea

Snehil says the initiative was conceived looking at how lovers would carve their names into the trunk of trees.

“In the olden days, couples would carve out their initials on the stem of a tree as a forever mark, and as a symbol of their love that would stay there forever. That is where the idea came from,” Snehil Khanor, CEO and Co-founder, TrulyMadly, tells YSWeekender.

The app has adopted a green lung of 1,000 trees at Sanjay Lake Park, Delhi, to commit to the social goals.

However, the initiative isn’t just restricted to the national capital.

“We try and plant a tree near to where the couple is. For example, if you’re in Mumbai, we’ll find a location near Mumbai. If you’re in Andhra Pradesh, we’ll find a location there,” he adds.

The team has sites in more than 30 cities, with almost 1,500 trees planted across India, including at Malappuram (Kerala), Panna Tiger Reserve (MP), Kashmir, Uttarkashi, Jamshedpur, etc.

The dating app has partnered with external vendors for the plantation and maintenance of trees, and sends them the geolocation and images of the trees.

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Fostering social consciousness

Many couples who met on the dating app have planted the trees. One of them is Naazish Naqvi, a Delhi-based advocate, who met her husband Major Naman Pandey through the dating app.

“Naman and I have been wanting to contribute to curbing the effects of global warming and live a sustainable life, but always fell short of the right channel. When TrulyMadly gave us the everlasting gift in the form of 10 trees that will blossom along with our love, it resonated with us at a much deeper level,” she says.

The aim of the initiative is to plant 10,000-20,000 trees in the next three to five years and create green lungs that act as carbon sinks to compensate for greenhouse gases. It also aims to remove particulate matter from the atmosphere, particularly small particles, which are responsible for major air pollution-related health hazards, which mostly impact regions like Delhi-NCR which suffers from pollution every winter.

According to a study by USDA, planting trees in urban environment can, directly and indirectly, affect local and regional air quality by altering the urban atmospheric environment. They do it through temperature reduction and other microclimatic effects, removal of air pollutants, emission of volatile organic compounds, and reduce building energy use though shading.