ATREEM meter measures a tree's girth against your carbon footprint (and wallet)

Worried about your impact on the planet? The ATREEM project by Nitipak Samsen, a graduate of London's Royal College of Art, makes doing something about it as easy as swiping your credit card. At least, that's the plan.

Samsen's ATREEM (or Automated Tree-Rental for Emission Encaging Machine) is, in short, a meter strapped to a tree that measures its girth and determines how much it offsets carbon emissions. You can queue up a list of greenhouse grievances — such as the amount of electricity you use or your daily drive to work (or even the amount of power it takes to run ATREEM) — and then swipe your credit card to donate money to the tree rental service running ATREEM.

It's all a bit tongue-and-cheek, but the aim of the project is to make the work done by carbon-emission-offsetting websites more tangible, as a physical tree would show you how long it takes for nature to handle what you do in your daily life.

Check out more in the gallery below.

Via Dezeen