How big is your Carbon Footprint?
The best way for all of us to lower our greenhouse gas emissions, often referred to as our carbon footprint, is to reduce our overall energy consumption. There are lots of ways we can do this at home and at work: turn down the thermostat, ride or walk to the store, use compact florescent light bulbs, drive a more fuel-efficient car, carpool, take public transportation.
But most of us can't just flip a switch and stop using oil to power our lives. We can't stop driving, flying, or heating and cooling our homes. And most of our cloths are made from petroleum-based materials. Fleece for example. So while we are working to reduce our energy consumption we also have the option to offset our non-renewable energy consumption. Offsetting means we fund projects that use renewable energy like solar and wind thus counterbalancing our emission from coal and petroleum. A combination of reducing and offsetting our greenhouse gasses is the only way we can be "carbon neutral."
Achieving carbon neutrality involves purchasing carbon offsets. You can buy carbon offsets to counter the emissions from driving, from air travel, and from powering your house. In fact you can offset just about anything you do as long as you can estimate the carbon emissions.
FitPlanet has a relationship with NativeEnergy, an offset provider based in Burlington, Vermont. We sell FitPlanet-NativeEnergy Offset Stickers at races and events for $3. This $3 offsets the equivalent of 300 miles or about 300 pounds of CO2.
We like NativeEnergy because it focuses on Native American, farmer-owned, and community-based renewable energy projects that create social, economic and environmental benefits to counteract carbon pollution and energy use. None of these projects would exist without funding from NativeEnergy. Still, FitPlanet works with other offset providers depending on the needs of our race organizers.
It's important to understand that offsetting your carbon footprint means you are still producing greenhouse gasses. You are not actually reducing your emissions, just counterbalancing them. Typically, you are buying the services of a company or organization that is or will at some point in the future, take those carbon emissions out of the atmosphere by planting trees, generating wind or solar power, reducing methane or CO2 by converting it to power or capturing it and storing it underground. More and more projects are being approved as appropriate for offsetting.
Here's an example of how carbon offsets work. Say you're planning to fly from Boston to San Francisco. Using an online carbon calculator -- Google Carbon Calculator -- you enter the distance you are traveling or your departure and arrival airports. The calculator tells you the carbon emissions in pounds or tons of CO2 that your seat on the plane is responsible for. From that number the carbon calculator then gives you a cost of offsetting those emissions. That cost depends on a few factors including the type of offset project that will counterbalance the amount of CO2 you are responsible for, such as funding a non-profit wind farm for example, and the fees the offset company (either a .com or .org) charges to administer the offset program.
For a Boston to San Francisco cross-country trip, one carbon calculator estimates the total CO2 emissions is 2.64 tons and the cost of offsetting these emissions is $26.37. Other calculators produce a range from $15-$30 for the same trip depending on the projects they are funding and the fees the offset company charges. Theoretically, paying this fee makes your trip Carbon Neutral.
Not all carbon offset providers are the same, so we recommend you conduct your own research to find out more about offsets and the practices of the companies. Try searching: Carbon Footprint, Carbon Neutral, Carbon Offset, and Carbon Calculator.
A good overview of Carbon Offsets, FitPlanet recommends the 2007 Tufts University Study on Voluntary Carbon Offsets in the Fit News Links to the right.