"a bi-monthly journal of environmental news and commentary..."

Offset Your Travel and Carbon Footprint Locally

By Michael Kelly and Pat Rasmussen

When you fly or drive you can offset your carbon emissions by a donation to Terra Commons. We are a local non-profit group helping Olympia residents to replace their lawns with edible forest gardens. Forest Gardens are no-till, organic polycultures that take carbon from the atmosphere and store it in fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, perennial vegetables and soil.

These gardens provide locally grown, organic food, reducing carbon emitted to the atmosphere: The average food item travels 1,500 miles before reaching your table. Growing our food in our own backyard means that large forests needed for carbon storage, wildlife and water are not cut down to make way for large-scale agriculture.

The lawns we are replacing have little carbon-fixing ability and people ride over them week after week with mowers. For every gallon of fuel burned, there is more than twenty-five pounds of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. Forest gardens reverse this trend, moving the local community toward a sustainable future.

Carbon offset programs offer an opportunity to donate funds toward tree planting or renewable energy projects, but often they are done far away from home. Why not offset your carbon right here in Olympia, donating to a project that you can see grow in your own hometown?

Or calculate your carbon footprint for your home and move toward becoming carbon neutral by removing your lawn and planting an edible forest garden. We can help you.

Calculate your carbon footprint at: www.empowermentinstitute.net/lcd/ or www.safeclimate.net/calculator/ or www.carboncounter.org

Flying and driving emission offset examples:

Fly round trip:	Emissions:	Carbon offset:
Seattle-Honolulu	2.143 tons CO2	$36
Seattle – New York	1.934 tons CO2	$24
Seattle – San Francisco	.544 tons CO2	$12
Drive round trip:	Emissions:	Carbon offset:
Olympia – New York	2.746 tons CO2	$48
Olympia – San Francisco	.726 tons CO2	$12

Or calculate your own emissions at: www.nativeenergy.com

For more information about Terra Commons and Forest Gardens, see our website at www.oly-wa.us/terra and The Olympian article on our Edible Forest Garden Project, "Nonprofit group pitches in to give Olympia woman edible yard," at http://www.theolympian.com/news/story/244686.html.

To donate to Terra Commons, send a check to: Terra Commons, 3725 36th Loop NW, Olympia, WA, 98502.

Michael Kelly and Pat Rasmussen work with Terra Commons. For more information contact Michael at 360-866-1331 or terracommons@gmail.com.

Back to Home page.