SOWING THE SEEDS OF SUCCESS

Using a laptop for an hour—13 grams. Watching television for an hour—96 grams. Taking a bus for a km—8 grams. This is the list Hu Jing makes each day when calculating the carbon dioxide emissions of her daily activities.

“My home activities alone can release over 1,000 kg of carbon dioxide each year,” Hu, a resident of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province in south China, told Shenzhen Evening News. “Planting trees is a good method to deal with this. In my case, at least 70 trees need to be planted to offset the carbon dioxide released by my activities.”

Every March, Hu travels with friends to plant trees in Dapeng, a seaside district of Shenzhen. In 1979, March 12 was set as China’s Arbor Day, or National Tree-Planting Day and, in 1981, the country launched a nationwide tree-planting campaign, suggesting that every able-bodied citizen between the ages of 11 and 60