Hello Citizen Scientists! I’m Ginny Johnson, Boxerwood educator and behind the scenes number-cruncher for the Backyard Compost Challenge (BCC). One of the other Boxerwood programs I facilitate is COREworks, our homegrown carbon offset marketplace. You may remember seeing it mentioned on the form you filled out at the start of the BCC.
COREworks is a mechanism to take your earth care actions and use them to ensure future earth care. COREworks verifies emission-reducing (earth care) projects, quantifies the amount of carbon emissions prevented from the completion of the projects, and translates those prevented emissions into “offsets.” People and organizations can secure offsets on the COREworks marketplace to balance out their own carbon footprint from activities like flying or driving. The funds from these offsets enable us to take on more earth care actions – like mass tree plantings, solar array installations, and more.
So how does COREworks relate to us here in the Backyard Compost Challenge? We know from a recent blog post that keeping food waste out of the landfill prevents methane emissions. Using the data you submit each week about how much food waste has been kept out of the landfill, I add it all up and translate that to the amount of methane emissions prevented by your collective action. COREworks can then offer those prevented emissions on the offset marketplace for other climate and earth-conscious people to secure, and the cycle of good deeds for the Earth continues.
There are plenty of carbon offset marketplaces operating on a global scale. In that model, businesses and people balance their carbon footprints by funding earth care projects that take place internationally. COREworks is one of only a handful of marketplaces keeping the whole operation local. Every project COREworks funds and verifies happens within the Rockbridge-Lexington-Buena Vista community. Basically, COREworks is a perpetual motion machine funding earth care projects right here in our very own community, and you’re a part of it! So as you save your food scraps this week, take pride in knowing that you are helping to fund a future compost project, or tree planting, or solar array installation right here in Rockbridge.
To learn more about COREworks and how it benefits our community, economy, and ecosystem, check out COREworks.boxerwood.org. Happy composting!
