Gadget for Carbon Offset Renting from Trees

Designer Nitipak Samsen has designed the Automated Tree-Rental for Emission Encaging Machine (ATREEM), which essentially allows you to purchase carbon credits from a tree. The gadget measures the growth of a tree, translating into how much carbon dioxide the tree has absorbed. The gadget is designed to highlight just how long it takes for our carbon dioxide emissions to be reabsorbed.

The device is more about awareness than being a practical method for charging people for their carbon dioxide emissions. However, the gadget is capable of charging credit cards using its swipe-card interface. Just to give you an idea about carbon emissions, this is what I discovered on the designer’s ATEM page:

The user interface of A.T.R.E.E.M. shows the intangible CO2 in term of a gram and how long does the tree take to offset that amount. i.e. 10 minutes on tube journey emits about 350 grams of CO2 and the tree takes 2 days 10 hours to offset that amount. This way the user can imagine how good they are at leaving waste to the planet.

As part of the design, Nitipak Samsen created a tape measure that helps children to realize the hard-to-imagine metrics for CO2 emissions into actual tree measurements. I think it’s a fantastic idea, and would love to see it in schools!