'We Recycle Your Air.'

Of course, Future Forests was just one of Morrell's new ideas -- and it would have to wait its turn. By 1992, he had cofounded a music-brokerage business, Fullview Productions Ltd., which flitted between record companies and advertising agencies to match prerelease material to TV ads for clients like Adidas, Guinness, and Honda. But the tree-planting bug was eating at him like a bad case of Dutch Elm disease. With backing from the Forestry Commission, Morrell took his idea to the UK's largest motoring organization, the Automobile Association, offering to plant forests to offset the CO2 generated by its members. The AA liked it, bought it -- then sat on it for three years.

Undeterred, Morrell bought his idea back and took it on the road. His one-day-a-month hobby turned into a two-weeks-a-month mission, as he milked his contacts for introductions to every CEO and marketing director that they knew. British Airways, Ford, Virgin -- Morrell tried them all. "When you know that something is fundamentally a good idea, then there's no way out." But while no one said no to Future Forests, no one said yes either. A breakthrough came in 1996, on a train journey to London, when Morrell found himself sitting across from Rodney Bickerstaffe, secretary- general of the UK's biggest trade union, Unison. The two men had never met before, but Morrell did what came naturally. "Poor guy, I gave him one and a half hours of wall-to-wall Future Forests."

Bickerstaffe made no promises, but a month later, Morrell received a check from a union member who wanted to buy a tree. Another check arrived a day later, and then the floodgates opened. Bickerstaffe had sent a memo to all of his members urging them to support Future Forests. "We had been spending all of our time appealing to the big wealthy brands, but it was the low-paid public-sector workers who really got us going."

Cleaning Up Business

"Dan has managed to create a tangible benefit from an invisible problem," says Sue Welland, 40, marketing director of Future Forests, who quit a high-profile job with Eurotunnel to work with Morrell. "He can make you believe that anything is possible and that you are the person to make it happen. He has the kind of lateral thinking and slight eccentricity that can make the difference between an okay idea and a piece of magic."

But without a proper scientific foundation, Morrell's magic could still appear to be an illusion. Unexpectedly, Future Forests had found a sympathetic ear in the motor-sport industry. Max Mosely, president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, invited Morrell to a Brussels, Belgium forum on CO2 emissions. It was there that Morrell first met Richard Tipper, a world authority on carbon sequestration and an environmental adviser to the UK government. "We hadn't really known what we were doing, to be honest," says Morrell. "But through Tipper, we were able to work out exactly how many trees would absorb the emissions of one car, one aircraft flight, one toaster, whatever. Getting the figures to stack up was fundamental to our credibility. We know that what we are claiming to be true is 100% true."

With Tipper punching in the figures, Future Forests developed a CO2 audit program, measuring how many tons of CO2 a company generates and then calculating how many trees would be needed to offset those tons. In the past two years, more than 40 clients have been through the audit, and such companies as the design group Imagination, the Independent, J. Walter Thompson Co., Mazda UK, and TRW Aeronautical Systems can now claim to be carbon-neutral.

Avis Europe PLC is one of Morrell's most enthusiastic fans. Last year, Avis planted more than 26,000 trees throughout the UK, in such locations as Birmingham, Manchester, and Tunbridge Wells, to help compensate for CO2 produced by its UK head office and 160 branches. And it's not just about upstaging rival Hertz, says Katharine Johnson, 36, the company's communications coordinator. "The impact has gone beyond tree planting," she says. "Working with Future Forests has given us a platform to have a debate within the company about our environmental responsibilities. It has started lots of conversations here and has made us think more carefully about the way that we and our customers use our cars. For example, we're setting up car-sharing clubs for our clients and looking at ways that we can work more closely with public-transport providers."

Mazda UK believes that its $25,000 investment in forests has yielded $3 million worth of PR. Tower Records is hoping for similar results when it makes its online sales service carbon-neutral this fall. Clients get a brand differential from carbon-neutrality, but they also get a kick out of the celebrity support that Morrell -- a prodigious networker and a member of London's exclusive Groucho Club -- has reeled in. Afrika Bambaataa, Stella McCartney, the Pet Shop Boys, and Joe Strummer all find room in their schedules for Morrell.