No one can make the leap to zero-carbon living or business in one go, much as we’d like to. We need to travel, need to heat our homes and offices, and buy goods and services that themselves generate carbon emissions.
You can reduce the emissions you make as much as possible, and then offset the remainder using our main calculator. So, if you have to make that flight take a look at our flights calculator, and offset for as little as £7.50 per tonne (excl. VAT).
A useful analogy
You can think of offsetting rather like bailing out a sinking lifeboat to help it stay afloat whilst others fix the hole. There’s no point sitting back and waiting for the fix, you need to do something in the meantime, especially if the hole-plugging is taking longer than you’d really like! Offsets are the bailing and should be viewed as part of the solution alongside government targets, reduction strategies and global regulation. Offsets are critical if we are to stay afloat long enough to sort the problem.
And the beauty of offsets is that it doesn’t matter where the emission reductions are made or where the initial pollution came from, as we’re all on the same earth and live under the same atmosphere. We source and fund projects where the biggest and most immediate emission reductions can be gained, from all around the world. Find out more about our projects.
Offsets help reduce emissions in more ways than one;
- Enable you to reduce your net emissions to zero, right now
- Help people understand and take responsibility for their impact on the environment
- Raise awareness about climate change and the methods available to deal with it
- Provide vital cash injections into innovating low carbon technologies
- Help fund the transition to a low-carbon world
- Deliver sustainable social benefits to some of the world’s poorest communities
Not all offsets are the same
It is important to buy quality offsets from providers such as ClimateCare which have a high level of transparency and approved methodologies. Clean Air – Cool Planet, published a very useful consumer guide to offsets in 2006. It compared offset schemes against a range of criteria including transparency, overheads, compliance with voluntary standards; utilising projects other than tree planting, and additionality (ensuring that the project was new and wouldn’t have gone ahead anyway). ClimateCare was one of eight companies earning the highest marks in the report and ranked top provider.
ClimateCare also trades under the guidelines of the Clean Development Mechanism requirements for project development. This ensures that projects are scrutinised by industry experts, to ensure that emission reduction projects are appropriate, transparent and promote conservation.
You can find out more in our standards section.