It is the question we asked ourselves first when we built Terry, and the question any honest critic should ask us:

If you genuinely believe in sustainability, why build a platform that runs on consumer purchases?

It is a good question. We are going to answer it honestly. Including the part where the answer is uncomfortable.

Let us start with something most companies would not say

At Terry, we believe we need to consume less. Much less. But when spending is necessary, we should do it better.

We mean that. And yes, we are aware of the tension.

A platform that generates revenue when people buy things is telling you to buy less. That is a genuine contradiction and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Our business model benefits when you spend more through Terry. Our values say you should spend less overall. Those two things do not sit entirely comfortably together, and we think you deserve to know that we know that.

So why build it anyway?

Because the alternative, waiting for a perfect model with no tensions before doing anything, is also a choice. And in practice, waiting for perfect means accepting things exactly as they are.

What Terry is actually built for

Terry was not built to make you buy more. Terry was built for the necessary purchases you have to make anyway.

The new toothbrush. The pack of underwear. The school shoes for your kids. The winter coat when your old one finally gives up. The holiday you have been planning for months. The energy contract that runs out in January. The insurance renewal that lands in your inbox. The phone plan you need to sort out before your current one expires.

Life involves spending. Not all of it is optional, and a lot of it is not even about physical things. Energy, connectivity, insurance, travel: these are services most people cannot really avoid. Terry works for all of it.

And beyond the everyday necessities, we are also building a growing selection of sustainable brands for when you are ready to make a more considered choice. Shops that are already doing things differently on materials, production and supply chains. So when you do need something new, Terry can help you find a better version of it.

The maths of money that already exists

Every time you buy something online, there is an economy happening in the background that most people never see.

Retailers set aside marketing budgets to attract customers. Part of that budget is paid out as a commission to whoever sends them a paying customer: an influencer who recommended the product, a comparison site, a cashback platform, a browser tool. That commission always gets paid out. The only question is who receives it and what happens to it next.

Without Terry, it goes to whoever that intermediary happens to be. They keep it as revenue and use it for whatever they like. That is not inherently wrong. It is just how the system works.

Terry intercepts that same commission and redirects half of it to nature and climate projects instead.

Not on top of what you pay. Not as an extra charge. From a financial stream that already existed, going to a different destination.

Here is a concrete example. You need a new laptop for work. You were going to buy it regardless. You go to Coolblue. Without Terry, the commission Coolblue pays goes to whatever channel sent you there, and stays with them as commercial revenue. With Terry, half of that same commission goes to Trees for All to plant trees in degraded landscapes across Europe.

The laptop purchase is the same. The price is the same. The difference is where a slice of the existing money ends up.

Economists call this additionality: money that would not have reached this destination without the intervention. That donation to Trees for All would not have existed. Now it does. And we publish every single euro of it publicly on our transparency page, so you never have to take our word for it.

Why do we work with KLM?

This is the question we have thought about the most. And the honest answer does not start with a defence. It starts with an acknowledgement.

Flying has a significant climate impact. We know that.

But here is the choice we made, and why:

People fly. With or without Terry. The flight from Amsterdam to Barcelona, the family holiday to Portugal, the business trip to London: these get booked regardless of whether Terry is involved.

The question is therefore not whether people should fly. The question is: given that this flight is being booked anyway, is it better that a portion of the commission goes to a kelp forest restoration project, or not?

We think yes.

That does not make it a climate-neutral flight. We are not compensating anything and we say that nowhere. But it does generate additional money for climate projects that would not have existed otherwise.

Is this the solution to the climate crisis? No. Is it better than the alternative? Yes.

We choose progress over perfection. And we are honest about the difference between the two.

What we do not do

Drawing a line matters just as much as explaining why we make certain choices.

We do not work with companies whose core business is extracting and selling oil, gas or coal. A company that profits directly from expanding fossil fuel production cannot credibly be part of a platform built around funding nature restoration. The fundamental activity works against everything we are trying to support.

We also do not work with platforms built entirely on the idea of selling as much disposable stuff as possible at the lowest conceivable price, where the whole business proposition relies on people buying things they would not otherwise have bought, and discarding them quickly so they buy again. A small donation per order does not offset that. And it would not be honest of us to pretend it does.

The principle behind both decisions is the same: if a company's business model is structurally at odds with what we are trying to achieve, we should not be the mechanism that puts a green label on it.

How we think about new partners

Our approach is not complicated, but we take it seriously.

We ask three questions for every potential retail partner.

First: is the core activity of this company fundamentally at odds with climate and nature restoration? If yes, they are out.

Second: for the purchases people are already making here, does Terry generate additional funding for climate projects that would not otherwise exist? If yes, and the first question did not rule them out, we consider them.

Third: are we honest about what this is and what it is not? A weekly grocery order is not an act of climate activism. It is a necessary purchase where a small amount now flows to a nature project instead of an ad budget. We keep that distinction sharp, in everything we say.

What we are not

We are not a carbon offset platform. We do not claim that purchases made through Terry are climate neutral. We do not sell carbon credits. We do not tell you that you have a clean conscience after buying a new television.

We are a mechanism that connects purchases people were already going to make with additional funding for climate and nature projects. Not more, not less.

That sounds modest. It is modest. But it is honest, and it is real.

Where we are right now

We are launching publicly this month, after a beta period in which almost a thousand donations were generated by our early users. Our live transparency page shows every donation generated and paid out, in real time, so you never have to guess where the money goes.

Right now, that counter is small. We know that. A purchase through Coolblue generates a few euros for a climate project. A booked holiday through a travel platform generates a little more. An energy contract switch or a new insurance policy can generate more still, because the commissions on services tend to be higher than on products.

It adds up differently for different people. But every euro on that counter is traceable, verified, and would not have existed without Terry.

The question we keep asking ourselves

We know this model can be challenged. Does it ultimately encourage more consumption? Is a contribution of a few euros per purchase negligible compared to the footprint of the product itself?

Those are fair questions. We do not have a fully satisfying answer to all of them.

What we do have: a transparency page where every euro is publicly visible. A project selection methodology grounded in scientific frameworks. And a willingness to have this conversation, even when the answers are uncomfortable.

The alternative, waiting until everything is perfect before doing anything, is also a choice. And in practice, waiting for perfect means accepting things exactly as they are.

In short

We believe in buying less. We work with KLM. That is not a contradiction we are hiding. It is a deliberate choice, made with open eyes about its limitations, grounded in a simple idea:

The money was already flowing. We just changed where it ends up.

Terry is launching publicly in June 2026. Every purchase through the Terry app or browser extension generates an automatic donation to a nature or climate project of your choice. Terry publishes all generated and paid-out donations live at terry.earth/nl/transparantie.

Want to respond to this piece, or did we miss something? Send us a message at hello@terry.earth. We are happy to have the conversation.