There are endless, easy ways that you can reduce your carbon emission starting in your garden:

• Simply plant more green-life
• Grow your own produce and herbs, it even tastes better
• Save energy and utilise natural light but taking your book or laptop into the garden
• Cover the ground with dense plantings to increase the night time absorption of CO2 from the air
• Think about what you can reuse before you recycle, and recycle more
• Mulch around soft fruit and flowering shrubs to reduce evaporation
• Use solar powered pond fountains and pool pumps, garden lights, hot showers alongside pools and barbecues
• Exercise by using hand tools rather than energy consuming petrol/diesel/electric powered garden tools and machines
• Increase the carbon sequestration of your soil by mulching to ensure a healthy living soil
• Reduce the use of artificial heating and cooling by planting deciduous trees near your house

The benefits of green-life and its role in offsetting carbon emissions:

• The average person produces 26 tonnes of CO2 per year
• A 25 foot tree absorbs the equivalent of 5 room air conditioners running 20 hours per day
• One mature tree intercepts between 54 and 109 kilograms of small particles and gases of air pollution
• One front yard tree intercepts over 3 kilograms of air pollutants
• Each tree planted ‘offsets’ your environmental impact by ‘breathing’ in about 730 kg in CO2 emissions over its lifetime of 100 years. It is estimated that the average person needs to save about 7,000 kg of CO2 per year. So planting just 10 trees per year is one strategy for achieving this.