The idea came during a year spent moving through some of the most naturally rich places I'd ever seen: Patagonia, the Amazon, Tayrona Park on Colombia's coast, and Botswana's Mashatu reserve. It made the natural world feel less like an abstract cause and more like something living, beautiful and worth protecting.
My background is not conservation work. I trained as a mechanical engineer, then spent years in talent and brand partnerships. I liked the craft, but I didn't feel fulfilled: my passion had always been the planet, I just hadn't found my way in yet. The question I kept circling was a simple one. How do I spend my life on the thing I actually love, and leave the world a little better than I found it? How do I make the ten-year-old who watched David Attenborough every week proud of where he ended up?
Last year, my dad and I worked with a team to try to get a million trees funded for planting in Africa. It didn't happen. Not because people didn't care, but because caring, on its own, doesn't move fast enough or far enough. Good intentions need a structure.
So I started building that structure instead. RENYU runs four-week competitions inside companies: the company backs it with a real donation, and charities protecting land, wildlife and water get funded.
The goal isn't to help companies look like they care. It's to help them do something real, and bring their people with them.
Teams come together and the planet gets a bit of itself back.
RENYU comes from renew. That is the mission behind everything we build.
— Eddie Sheridan, Founder