Carbon Offsetting
There has been a bit of bad press recently about carbon offsetting schemes and how good they actually are. There’s also a lot of confusion on what different offsetting schemes offer and if they’re actually any good. Many companies now, such as EasyJet from the aviation industry offer a carbon offsetting scheme, where you can pay an additional fee to have the emissions you’ve caused offset. When I went on holiday there was an option to help with a dam scheme, but dams have enviromental issues of their own.
Now to offset all the pollution that road traffic causes in Scotland you’d have to plant enough trees to cover Edinburgh, so a scheme like this isn’t practical. The Carbon Neutral Company which was set up in 1990 helps companies like Volvo, Channel 4 and Barclay’s Bank and have one hundred and fifty different projects across six continents at the moment. Companies pay a per tonne of CO2 fee (a voluntary tax almost) to the Carbon Neutral Company which sets up projects financing practical projects in counties that need them. Such as solar and wind schemes, methane recovery, waste reduction and planting forests.
So I’ve covered what businesses can do, but what about just you and me? Though we only create a small amount of emissions on the whole, with running a car, owning a house and so on we all play a part. Now it’s not always possible to live an entirely green life. If you drive a car then by owning a more economical car and not revving it heavily, emptying out waste from the boot and by driving smarter you should be able to limit the damage you cause. Check out the act on CO2 website for the government’s guide to this. The government are also running grants to make getting loft and wall insulation more affordable. Now all this is good, but it’s not offsetting, it’s reducing - I’ll post more about that at another time!
Firstly you’ll need to know what your carbon footprint is. Google offer a reasonable service to help you estimate your footprint on their website. From this you can find out how many tonnes of CO2 you create so you know how much you need to offset by.
A company called Climate care offer the ability to offset your carbon emissions. They even let you give carbon offsetting presents.
BP run a project called Target Neutral which aims to help motorists learn how to reduce and replace their carbon emissions from driving. They have quite a useful website for finding ways to reduce the offset you’ll need to pay and also a variety of schemes that they run which you could donate to.
There are a wide variety of other schemes available which you could use to offset your emission on this directory.
Hopefully this has given you a bit of insight into offsetting your emissions. Please post what your footprint is in the comments section - don’t be embarrassed!