Reducing Your Carbon Footprint: Is Carbon Offsetting a Solution?

Life on Earth can be preserved in the case of maintaining the right balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the atmosphere. This is achieved by reducing the waste of carbon dioxide produced by human activities such as driving cars, burning fossil fuels, maintaining certain industrial processes, etc. Despite the commitment people make, it is almost impossible to avoid all emissions that contribute to the carbon footprint. This is where carbon offsetting enters the stage.

What Carbon Offsetting Is

Carbon offsetting is a way to compensate for the carbon impact by purchasing carbon credits from trading exchange companies. Carbon offsets are usually measured in tons of CO2 equivalents and the money paid for them is further used to fund important sustainability projects. Simply put, carbon offsetting is an attempt to let agents buy off the negative impact they produce and use the money to reduce the carbon footprint and prevent severe climate change.

How Carbon Offsetting Works

According to the Statista report, in 2017, there were over 62 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent voluntary carbon offsets issued. This is much more than the offsets retired. Such a tendency induces project developers to design technological innovations to reduce carbon footprint. It is a good idea since governments cannot deal with climate change on their own. The only way to succeed is coordinating efforts with the investors, the private sector, and businesses. A carbon offsetting scheme has plenty of benefits:

• It allows businessmen to learn more about their companies and determine weak points in the supply chain
• It helps old businesses become more responsive to present-day sustainability expectations
• It helps to calculate the losses done by greenhouse gas emissions
• It promotes wise sustainability initiatives and speeds up the expansion of renewable energy technologies

Individuals and businesses should take responsibility for the generated emissions within their activities. Unfortunately, removing all emissions is quite challenging, and people cannot expect to solve this problem in a day. While carbon offsetting is the way for individuals and businesses to invest in shifting to a low carbon economy, it still is not a part of a sustainability mindset too. The more efficient way to reduce carbon footprint is to learn how to make life more sustainable.

Consider a few efficient tips that will help reduce carbon footprint. Since people spend most part of their lives at work, the tips relate both to individuals, SMEs, and large corporations that should learn to self-regulate their impact on the planet.

Tips on Reducing Carbon Footprint

Sustainability education can show you many ways for your company to become more sustainable. Many changes do not require incredible money spending and will not affect your business practice. Here are five simple ways that your company can implement to reduce the carbon footprint:

1. Check out your current carbon consumption. You can hire an expert to do the review or use SustainOnline reporting platform to calculate the impact across all of your business locations. It will help you understand where you are at the moment and how you can improve the situation.
2. Consider an energy upgrade in the office. Make the windows more energy efficient, purchase LED bulbs and good blinds, do maintenance of the office central heating system, etc. As a result, you will save money and reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources.
3. Save the energy by turning off and unplugging the devices. Encourage employees to switch off the plug sockets at the end of the working day. Make sure all equipment, microwaves, lights, kettles are switched off fully. It will both cut consumption and your electricity bills.
4. Let the employees work from home and encourage sharing. However, at least one day of remote work per month is a good way to reduce carbon emissions, as this allows to avoid driving to and from work. Using and encouraging sharing economy among the employees is another good way to promote sustainability and reduce the unnecessary release of carbon dioxide.
5. Measure your progress. Make sustainability reporting a regular practice. This will help control your strategy and adjust it in accordance with the goals you set and achieve.

The Last Word

Climate change is a real challenge, but not an insoluble one. Carbon offsetting is one, yet, not the only solution, as an investment into the green economy should go hand in hand with reducing the current levels of emissions.

Large corporations, as well as SMEs, can achieve much progress globally by making sure the employees get quality online sustainability education and develop relevant skills for implementing sustainability in their everyday lives and in all processes within the company.