ACT 5 - CArbon offsets

While we paid all the optional offsets on travel we also wanted to plant some trees to complete our offsets. 
The question of carbon storage depends on the type of tree you plant, how long it lives and a million other factors 🤨 but generally what I found is that one tree can absorb around 22kg of carbon a year or 1 tonne in a lifetime (calculated at 40 years - the relationship isn't quite linear). People recommend that you plant approximately 5 trees for every one you hope will live for 40 years. However I wanted to offset my carbon asap. So I made an educated guess and decided I would be happy if I could plant 24 trees. 
Luckily my lovely friend and colleague Fiona Hume has a farm and is very pro-active with revegetation. With a lot of people travelling for conferences it wasn't hard to find a few willing volunteers to some along and help. 

This year (2020) we went headed back to Arundel farm and with a few extra helpers, planted an extra 1000 tree, shrubs and grasses! Amazingly Fi also tells us that <50 of the trees we planted in 2019 died. Feeling pretty proud!

I have now done 3 planting days on 2 farms in 2020, with 2,300 trees, shrubs and grasses planted! Now the farmers would have done this anyway so I can't take credit but it sure feels good.