Instant Environmental Satisfaction

June 4, 2004 4:43 PM

Greenfleetis an Australian environmental organisation who aim to help citizens offset their own greenhouse gas emmissions. Their Tree Totaller (Australian-based, but I'm sure conversions are easy) works out how many trees you need to offset your annual emmissions, based on private car, home energy use and flights. It's a very neat little flash-app, and at the end it lets you chose to "subscribe" to Greenfleet so they'll plant the necessary number of trees for you. I owe 44 trees, for only AU$103 a year.
posted by Jimbob (7 comments total)

Greenfleet was previously briefly mentioned here - the Tree Totaller is a new addition, however.
posted by Jimbob at 4:46 PM on June 4, 2004

I only need 8 trees...this is cool. (kilometers are shorter than miles, right?)
posted by amberglow at 5:11 PM on June 4, 2004

Future Forests does something similar with going CarbonNeutral.
posted by homunculus at 5:12 PM on June 4, 2004

Don't the trees release the carbon when they die?
posted by stbalbach at 6:06 PM on June 4, 2004

Don't the trees release the carbon when they die?

Yes...at the same time as all the seedlings they produce are growing and fixating carbon. Circle of life :)
posted by Jimbob at 6:59 PM on June 4, 2004

Can this tree total be right? I mean, I burn a lot of oil relative to most people in the world, and based on this I guess I need only 30 trees or so. (Lucky for me, I have a lot more than that.)

There's got to be more than 30 trees per person in the world on average though, right? The forests are full of them!
posted by sfenders at 9:51 PM on June 4, 2004

Yikes! With six people in my household, and two of my kids old enough to drive, and booking over 100K miles a year on United alone, I owe 243 trees for my household. The only saving grace is natural gas heat and water heater, which scores out with zero impact. What do I owe for that? Maybe I need to restock a fish pond to get my eco-karma back in balance.
posted by JParker at 10:18 PM on June 4, 2004