Introducing: Offsetter.io. The simplest, fastest way to take action on climate change
My name is Adam, and I’m worried about climate change. In fact, I’ve been worried about climate change for some time. Last year, I reached a breaking point. I can’t remember what the exact trigger was. Another bad climate news story. Witnessing a Swedish teenager take the problem on her shoulders. The pleas of a 94 year old English natural historian. Perhaps it was all of those things. Either way, I knew I had to do something.
My friend’s name is John, and he’s also worried about climate change. We found ourselves in the same boat. Young fathers. Tech industry veterans. Problem solvers. How could we take our combined talent and experience, and put it to use tackling this problem? Motivation was not lacking. After some initial experiments and research, we both quit our jobs, and built Offsetter.io.
What is Offsetter.io?
Offsetter.io is a service that allows you to calculate and offset your carbon footprint on an ongoing basis, and helps you to reduce your footprint over time.
Let me take a step back and explain what all of that means.
Your carbon footprint
Carbon is the common term for the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Your carbon footprint is the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere caused by your individual activities. It’s your personal contribution, the part of the problem you can directly do something about. The electricity used by your home, the food you eat, and the number of flights you take are some of the things that contribute to your carbon footprint.
Offsetter.io allows you to estimate what your footprint is, measured in tonnes of carbon.
Offsetting
Carbon offsetting means investing in projects whose net effect is a reduction in the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, either by drawing down gases already in the atmosphere (planting trees does this), or by preventing greenhouse gases getting there in the first place (for example by investing in wind energy, meaning less energy needs to be sourced from coal).
The amount of greenhouse gases that a particular project removes from the atmosphere can be measured. For example, we can say that if we plant x trees in this particular forest, we can remove x tonnes of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. There are different certification programs that verify this. The most stringent, and well known, is Gold Standard®.
Offsetter.io takes your carbon footprint and invests the equivalent amount of tonnes in carbon reducing projects. We only invest in projects that are Gold Standard® certified.
Reducing
As the old saying goes, prevention is better than cure. Being aware of and offsetting your existing carbon footprint is a great start to taking action on climate change. Reducing your carbon footprint, however, means less greenhouse gases getting into the atmosphere in the first place.
With Offsetter.io, as well as calculating and offsetting, we’ll provide you with smart, actionable advice on how you can reduce your carbon footprint, and shrink the amount of carbon you need to offset in the first place. You can track your footprint reduction over time, to see in real terms the impact on climate change of changes you make.
How to take action on climate change with Offsetter.io
You can do this in a few short steps.
1. Head on over to Offsetter.io, and click the ‘Offset my carbon’ button.
2. Get your estimated carbon footprint using our calculator, which looks like this:
3. Choose how much of your footprint you wish to offset:
4. Sign up and enter your payment details.
5. And you’re done.
Need more info?
Check out our Frequently asked questions page, which explains in more detail things like how we calculate your footprint and how we select which projects to invest your money in.
You can also get in touch directly by sending an email to info@offsetter.io. We’d love to hear from you.
Let’s get started on climate change
If you are like us, and want to take action on climate change but don’t know where to begin, take the first step at Offsetter.io.
