Just ahead of Earth Day and Arbor Day, Service Objects has joined forces with One Tree Planted, pledging to plant ten trees for each new customer as part of the company’s ongoing commitment to corporate conservation.

“For over a decade, Service Objects has been dedicated to reducing waste and encouraging conservation best practices,” said Geoff Grow, Founder and CEO of Service Objects. “In a month that includes Arbor Day and Earth Day, this partnership with One Tree Planted amplifies our commitment to sustainability and community engagement.”

Reforestation, awareness and corporate sustainability

Every two seconds, the world loses an area of forest the size of a football field. With 80% of the planet’s forests destroyed, the continued removal of trees without adequate reforestation adversely impacts all aspects of the earth’s environment, from biodiversity to carbon sequestration and climate change.

One Tree Planted, a Vermont based non-profit, was created by Matt Hill in 2014 with the goal of combining reforestation with education, awareness, and community engagement. By working with local reforestation partners in Africa, Asia, North America, and South America, One Tree Planted selects tree species with the highest survival rates for each region.

One million trees

Recently, the organization announced the Million Tree Challenge. By providing funding for micro-reforestation, the Million Tree Challenge will help plant 500-25,000 trees per project with the goal of improving watershed management and restoring habitats.

“We are calling out to all those big companies to get involved,” said One Tree Planted Founder Matt Hill. “If you are a Fortune 500 Company or even a small to mid-size business, then signup today and help commit to planting 2000 trees because together we can easily reach one million trees planted.”

By pledging to plant ten trees for each new customer, Service Objects joins the ranks of 500 participating companies, each of whom have promised to plant 2,000 trees to help with reforestation efforts in many regions throughout the US, including California, which was hit last year with a series of devastating wildfires. Though reforestation may take two years or more, the goal is to repopulate the affected areas with one million trees to help restore habitats and reestablish the region’s ecosystems.

“Two thousand dollars is not a major commitment for most companies,” said Hill. “We want to make it super simple for any company to get involved and make a positive impact.”

A continued commitment to corporate conservation

Each month, Service Objects prevents over 300 tons of paper from ever reaching a landfill through its Address Validation APIs. In March, the company reached a significant milestone by validating over 3 billion transactions. By helping companies around the world maintain accurate and up-to-date contact data for their customers, Service Objects has aided in the reduction of waste and fraud.

So far, the positive impact of the 3 billion transactions benchmark has resulted in the reduction of 6 million gallons of oil, decreased energy demand by 93 million kilowatt hours, and saved 205 thousand cubic yards of landfill space. In addition, by eliminating the need for 193 million pounds of paper and 670 million gallons of water, Service Objects has helped preserve over 1.6 million trees.

For Grow, the idea to start Service Objects was inspired by his desire to apply math and big data to the problem of reducing waste caused by the corporate world’s dependence on incorrect contact information. Through the years, the entire team at Service Objects has continued to follow Grow’s example, making corporate conservation a core value and a prominent part of company culture. From wind power and highly efficient virtualized servers to recycled office supplies and a bike-friendly ethos, Service Objects and its employees focus on embracing the paperless philosophy and treading lightly on the world around them.

“Since the beginning, Service Objects has been dedicated to reducing waste and encouraging conservation best practices,” says Grow. “Corporate conservation is deeply rooted in our company culture, and this partnership with One Tree Planted allows us to expand our efforts and strengthen our commitment to preserving our natural resources and helping the environment.”

Thanksgiving in the United States is about much more than taking a couple of days off from work, eating too much turkey, or starting your holiday shopping. This holiday has always had a higher purpose: to reflect and give thanks every year. So what am I thankful for?

There are three things on my list. First and foremost, I am thankful for you, our customers. Obviously every CEO is thankful for paying customers, but I also mean it from a different perspective: you are a very diverse and talented group of people, and we enjoy working with you. Our customers run the whole gamut of applications: increasing museum attendance through demographic analysis, creating precise address lists to expand rural broadband coverage, geocoding maps of hurricane refugees, and much more. It is truly never boring to come to work here.

Which leads me to the next thing on my list: I am thankful that Service Objects is a great place to work. We began as a small startup in 2001, but today we are a growing organization whose management team has over a century of combined experience in our respective fields.  And we hire really cool people! We have a strong culture that emphasizes teamwork, healthy living and environmental awareness. And who wouldn’t be thankful for coming to work in sunny Santa Barbara, California every morning?

More important, everyone here is extremely good at what they do, whether it is technology, service, or operations. We operate in a very competitive space, and quite frankly the talent of our people – and the clear service culture people experience when they work with us – is our biggest competitive differentiator. If you look at the many customer success stories on our website, you will find clients raving about our technology AND our people, and I am very proud of that.

Finally, one of the biggest things I am thankful for is the chance to make a real difference in the environment we share on this planet. Many people know that I first started this company in response to the problem of excessive junk mail in the waste stream, developing mathematical models for ways to mitigate this massive waste of resources. Our focus on real-time contact validation, and all the products and services that follow from there always has had its roots in resource conservation.

Today, we are proud to have processed nearly three billion transactions. This translates directly to less waste and more efficient use of our precious resources, saving 23 million gallons of water and 11 thousand cubic yards of landfill space each and every year. Since Service Objects’ inception in 2001 this adds up to 12 million trees and 150 million pounds of paper saved – and counting. This is a legacy we frankly cherish as much as any quarterly sales figures.

SO what are you thankful for?

Hope you have a very happy Thanksgiving holiday!

April 22 marks the annual celebration of Earth Day, a day of environmental awareness that is now approaching its first half century. Founded by US Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970 as a nationwide teach-in on the environment, Earth Day is now the largest secular observance in the world, celebrated by over a billion people.

Earth Day has a special meaning here in our hometown of Santa Barbara, California. It was a massive 1969 oil spill off our coast that first led Senator Nelson to propose a day of public awareness and political action. Both were sorely needed back then: the first Earth Day came at a time when there was no US Environmental Protection Agency, environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council were in their infancy, and pollution was simply a fact of life for many people.

If you visit our hometown today, you will find the spirit of Earth Day to be alive and well. We love our beaches and the outdoors, this area boasts over 50 local environmental organizations, and our city recently approved a master plan for bicycles that recognizes the importance of clean human-powered transportation. And in general, the level of environmental and conservation awareness here is part of the culture of this beautiful place.

It also has a special meaning for us here at Service Objects. Our founder and CEO Geoff Grow, an ardent environmentalist, started this company from an explicit desire to apply mathematics to the problem of wasted resources from incorrect and duplicate mailings. Today, our concern for the environment is codified as one of the company’s four core values, which reads as follows:

“Corporate Conservation – In addition to preventing about 300 tons of paper from landing in landfills each month with our Address Validation APIs, we practice what we preach: we recycle, use highly efficient virtualized servers, and use sustainable office supplies. Every employee is conscious of how they can positively impact our conservation efforts.”

Today, as Earth Day nears the end of its fifth decade, and Service Objects marks over 15 years in business, our own contributions to the environment have continued to grow. Here are just a few of the numbers behind the impact of our data validation products – so far, we have saved:

• Over 85 thousand tons of paper
• A million and a half trees
• 32 million gallons of oil
• More than half a billion gallons of water
• Close to 50 million pounds of air pollution
• A quarter of a million cubic yards of landfill space
• 346 million KWH of energy

All of this is an outgrowth of more than two and a half billion transactions validated – and counting! (If you are ever curious about how we are doing in the future, just check the main page of our website: there is a real-time clock with the latest totals there.) And we are always looking for ways to continue making lives better though data validation tools.

We hope you, too, will join us in celebrating Earth Day. And the best way possible to do this is to examine the impact of your own business and community on the environment, and take positive steps to make the earth a better place. Even small changes can create a big impact over time. The original Earth Day was the catalyst for a movement that has made a real difference in our world – and by working together, there is much more good to come!

Service Objects recently celebrated our 15th year in business and it made me reflect on something that is important to me and is an underappreciated reason for improving your data quality: protecting our environmental resources.

Lots of companies talk about protecting the environment. Hotels ask you to re-use your towels, workplaces encourage you to recycle, and restaurants sometimes forego that automatic glass of ice water on your table. Good for them – it saves them all money as well as conserving resources. But our perspective is somewhat different because environmental conservation is one of the key reasons I founded this company in 2001.

Ever since I was a young man, I’ve been an avid outdoorsman who has felt a very strong connection to the natural world we inhabit. So one of the things I couldn’t help but notice was how much mislabeled direct mail showed up at my doorstep, as well as those of my friends. Some companies might even send three copies of the same thick catalog, addressed to different spellings of my name. Add in misdirected mail that never arrives, poor demographic targeting, and constant changes in workplace addresses, and you have a huge – and preventable – waste of resources.

As a mathematician and an engineer by training, thinking through the mathematics of how better data quality could affect this massive waste stream was a large part of the genesis of Service Objects. We discovered that the numbers involved were truly staggering. And we discovered that simple, automated filters driven by sophisticated database technology could make a huge difference in these figures.

Since then, our products have made a real difference. Over the past 15 years, our commitment to reducing waste associated with bad address data has saved over 1.2 million trees, and prevented over 150 million pounds of paper from winding up in landfills. We have also saved 520 million gallons of water and prevented 44 million pounds of air pollution. More important, these savings are driven by a growing enterprise that has now validated over two and a half billion contact records for over 2400 customers.

As a company, our concern for the environment goes far beyond the services we provide to customers. We encourage our staff to ride their bicycle to work instead of driving their car, use sustainable office supplies, and keep a sharp eye on our own resource usage. Corporate conservation is one of the four core values of our company’s culture. The result is a team I am proud of, with a shared vision and sense of purpose.

There are many great business reasons for using Service Objects’ data quality products, including cost savings, fraud prevention, more effective marketing, and improved customer loyalty. But to me personally, using a smaller footprint of the Earth’s resources is the core that underlies all of these benefits. It is a true example of doing well by doing good.

For any business – particularly those who do direct marketing, distribute print media or ship tangible products, among many others – improving your data quality with us can make a real difference to both your bottom line AND our planet’s resources. We are proud to play a part in protecting the environment, and look forward to serving you for the next 15 years and beyond.

Each year a staggering amount of paper waste ends up in our landfills from undeliverable as addressed mail. Service Objects suite of Address Validation APIs save approximately 300 tons of paper from entering our landfills each month.