Our Story
GreenTea didn't come out of a boardroom or a venture pitch. It started with one person, a worry about the planet, and the one skill he had to offer. This is the honest version of how it came to be.
Hi, I'm Nick
I was born and raised in Canada, and these days I live in Victoria, British Columbia. I'm a software engineer — I studied at the University of Victoria and now work at Electronic Arts. Most importantly to me lately, I'm a new dad, which has a way of making you think hard about the world the next generation is going to inherit.
Away from a keyboard, I'm a musician. I play guitar, bass, and drums, and over the years I've been lucky enough to play in a bunch of bands across jazz, funk, ska, and alternative. I think that's part of why community matters so much to me — the best things I've been part of were always a group of people making something together.
Why I built GreenTea
Climate change is the kind of problem that can make you feel small. I'm not a scientist or a politician, and I can't fix it on my own. But I kept coming back to a simple question: what can I actually do with what I know how to do?
What I know how to do is build software. So I built the most useful thing I could think of — a social network where the profit goes to fighting climate change instead of into someone's pocket. And since I was building it anyway, I wanted to fix the things people quietly hate about social media: the endless scroll, the outrage, the feeling that you're the product. That's where GreenTea's ideas come from — a shared daily limit so the whole community is living the same day, Nearby for real local connection, Open Water for discovery without the doom-scroll, Circles for the people you actually trust, and ads that are strictly opt-in, never forced on anyone.
I won't pretend this is going to solve the climate crisis. It's one person's honest attempt to point a little bit of good in the right direction. It's the best I could do to help — so I did it.
It takes more than one person
GreenTea is run by me and a few friends who believe in it, and it only really works if people show up and make it theirs. If the idea resonates with you, the most helpful thing you can do is join in — post something, connect with people, and be part of proving that social media can be good for people and good for the planet.