I've accepted the fact that many things I do on a regular basis are probably not good for the environment. I'm probably wasteful with energy and clean water in my home. I enjoy driving quite a bit, as recreation as well and transportation. I'm all about taking the scenic route. I enjoy drinking wine, which is an energy intensive product to bring to market. I buy products based on price and convenience without really thinking about the amount of energy that was invested to bring that product to market.
I haven't quantified any of this, but the popular term is "carbon footprint", and I'm guessing mine is fairly large. I've read about organizations that will allow me to buy "carbon credits" in order to offset my carbon footprint. These credits (my money) then get invested in clean energy technology, which is great, and reforestation projects, which I'm also a fan of.
This is all well and good, but I'm far less inclined to buy environmental improvement from some third party than I am to create environmental improvement in my own backyard - literally. I think of my yard as an oxygen factory. I keep my turf green and growing, I keep my trees healthy and I'm constantly adding live plant materials into my landscape. Right now, with everything in full green mode, I have an intuitive sense that tells me I'm producing a bunch of oxygen right on my own property. I've wondered if there's a good way to quantify this, and apparently somebody else had the same idea.
Oxygenfootprint.org is a website managed by the people at 10-20 Media, and best I can tell they're planning to create an "Oxygen Footprint" calculator that will allow you to calculate your oxygen production. I'm really interested to see how this works. I'll be especially curious to find out if it handles variables like actively growing turf vs. dormant turf, because the difference between walking barefoot on a lush cool green lawn and a crunchy brown dormant lawn is like night and day.
In any event it's a really cool idea. I'm much more interested in creating an oxygen producing green oasis in my own community than I am in sending a check to an organization that claims they can offset my carbon usage.