Carbon Offsetting

So what exactly is carbon offsetting, and how can you reduce yours?

A couple of years ago few had even heard the phrase 'carbon footprint'. But now we're all fast becoming carbon literate, if not yet neutral.

A carbon footprint is the measure of the total amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere as a result of things we do in our everyday lives such as travel, shopping, washing, even watching TV! Your footprint is made up of two parts: the direct or primary footprint; and the indirect or secondary footprint.

The primary footprint measures our direct emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels including domestic energy and transport, e.g. car and plane journeys.

The secondary footprint measures indirect CO2 emissions from the whole lifecycle of products we use from manufacture through to eventual breakdown. A carbon footprint is measured in tonnes per year, and numerous websites can help you work out yours, such as www.carbonneutral.com and www.carbonfootprint.com.

Given the plight of the planet, if you worked out what might be an acceptable carbon footprint for the entire globe and then divided it by the global population, you might come up with a figure of about one tonne per person.

Oh dear. It goes without saying that in the pampered West our individual carbon footprint is a tad larger. For example, the national average for the UK is around 11 tonnes. The average US carbon footprint is nearly 20 tonnes, while each Chinese person has a footprint of around 3.2 tonnes and the average Indian emits 1 tonne. It's pretty obvious that the poorer a person is, the less carbon they emit - which doesn't bode well for the future when you consider the rate of economic growth in countries such as China and India!

But everyone can cut their carbon footprint. Although individual actions can't possibly have the impact that reducing aviation fuel use and power station emissions would have, every little helps. For instance, you could save 2kg of carbon for every journey under three miles where you walk and don't use the car, and 30kg by switching the power off in your house at night.

HOW TO SHRINK YOUR PRIMARY FOOTPRINT.

Don't go by air.
Sign up to a renewable energy provider.
Insulate and install solar water heating.
Use public transport.
Car share..

AND YOUR SECONDARY

Don't buy items that produce high emissions in the manufacture or delivery e.g.:

Bottled water, especially from abroad.
Food and drink from far distances - buy local or grow your own.
Meat, especially red meat.
Clothes from far-off lands.
Highly packaged items.

CARBON OFFSETTING

Carbon offsetting aims to reduce the impact of carbon dioxide emissions from everyday activities such as driving cars, heating homes and flying. A carbon offset provider can calculate the emissions you produce and then pay for them through a donation to a project that reduces carbon by the equivalent amount.

Energy efficiency schemes include installing energy saving devices in houses; renewable energy schemes such as wind farms; or tree-planting schemes that can take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

However, carbon offsetting is not the panacea we'd all like. There is tendency to think that you can simply buy your way out of the problem of rising carbon emissions, and some environmental campaigners are worried that offsetting discourages people from cutting greenhouse gases in the first place.

Still, if you do want to offset - and surely doing something is better than doing nothing - make sure the offset provider conforms to the government's gold standard (www.cdmgoldstandard.org), which adheres to the Kyoto protocol on climate change.

At the time of writing only four companies do: they are Pure (www.puretrust.org. uk); Carbon Offsets (www.carbon-offsets.com); Global Cool (www.global-cool.com) and Equiclimate (www.ebico.co.uk).

Still, offsetting only accounts for a fraction of all emissions produced. Long term we need to radically cut our emissions rather than mitigate them.


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