Project "Balance of Oxygen"

Society "Sopot For The Environment", together with Sopot Municipality and Polish Guiding and Scouting Association initiated a project "Balance of oxygen". The aim was to define how much of oxygen is produced in the urbanised areas of Sopot and how much is used in the life processes. But the most important aim was to involve young people, who in fact are realising the project and thus to make them more ecologically conscious.

The first step was to make an inventory of green areas. The youth had to find single trees or green areas, define the species, measure, the plants calculate the surface areas of leaves and needles. All the measurements were marked on the map of the city in scale 1: 500. In this way we counted that about 40% of the urbanised area in our town is "green".

The project may sound very easy but it was really a big work! We wrote about 100 pages of materials and we have prepared a map that had about 6 square meters of surface. The first, and most difficult part of the project, was finished with the big meeting of scouts, pupils from primary schools and local authorities, an event connected with planting of new trees in our town.

About 200 of young people, who took part in the project learned how to define species of plants and how to take care of green areas. We also learned that it is not so easy to do something together!

We haven't already counted the balance: it's the second stage of the project, unfortunately it is the role of specialists. There is also the third stage - it is to be based on co-operation with other municipalities from Baltic Sea Region. The idea is to compare the results in towns and to think together about what can be done in order not to waste oxygen resources on our local and global level.

The educational aspect of the project is priceless: the work for sustainable development of today's adults has to be based on involvement, ecological consciousness and education of the youngest generation. Sopot Municipality is now looking for partners for the project from the Baltic Sea area !