Everything You Need To Know About Going Carbon Neutral

Carbon dioxide (CO2) has been given a bad name lately. When we hear about it in relation to climate change it’s often talked about as if it’s an inherently harmful gas. But in reality, carbon dioxide occurs naturally in the earth’s atmosphere and is necessary for keeping our planet at a livable temperature. The problem is that humans started producing carbon emissions from industrial activities — the last time there was this much carbon in the atmosphere, human beings did not exist.

It should be clear: the problem isn’t carbon (CO2) itself, it’s the excess CO2. And lately, we’ve been contributing more than ever.

For the majority of human history, the atmosphere held roughly 280 parts per million (ppm), or 280 CO2 molecules per million molecules of air. This may seem insignificant, but the average temperature on earth would be around 0℉ without these 280 molecules per million. And that’s not even taking into consideration their less prevalent greenhouse gas counterparts, which would further drop the global average temperature.

Recently, we crossed the 400 ppm mark — and it doesn’t look like we will be stopping anytime soon. This is worrying because average temperatures rise along with CO2, and even slight temperature increases can have devastating consequences on our global ecosystem. That’s why it’s imperative that we reduce our carbon emissions significantly. We know eliminating them completely is impossible. For starters, we release carbon dioxide with every breath we exhale. We also don’t have the immediate capacity to shutter all industrial emissions without collapsing the world’s industries into a state of dysfunction.

Fortunately, there is something we can do to help mitigate our own personal carbon emissions — and we can do it without completely disrupting our standard of living.

What does it mean to be carbon neutral?

We need to reduce carbon emissions at an increased rate, coming up with innovative solutions to replace the energy and infrastructure that will be vacated. And, as we do this, we also need to pull carbon from the air to keep it out of the atmosphere. It sounds simple, and in a way, it is. Going carbon neutral simply means that an individual — or a business, government, or other group — accounts for all carbon emissions they are responsible for and balances them out by funding an equivalent amount of carbon sequestration. Sequestration is the act of taking carbon out of the air and storing it, or sequestering it, in living things (mainly trees), underground, or in solid form (such as coal).This is done most commonly (and effectively, at least at present) by planting trees. There are other methods of carbon capture and storage, such as industrial filter units, which are improving as possible options to help reclaim CO2 in solid form.

Going carbon neutral should be approached more holistically, rather than be achieved by simply throwing money at the issue. It requires an understanding of the amount of emissions you are ultimately responsible for and ensuring that you sequester as much as you released.

Who is going carbon neutral?

Governments

Governments, at different levels, realize the importance of carbon neutrality to help mitigate the negative effects that climate change will bring. Some offer little more than press-friendly words, but others are making a real commitment to improvement: Copenhagen, Denmark is on pace to become the first carbon-neutral city in the world within the next five years, setting a great example for other places to follow.

Companies

Many companies are recognizing the value in going carbon neutral for their Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy and the benefits that reducing carbon emissions will have on their business. ANA Holdings became the first global airline to issue Green Bonds to offset carbon emissions, which essentially means they are taking on the offset challenge rather than passing it on to their customers. Every ride taken on Lyft is carbon neutral, thanks to their offset program, and Disney has achieved net-zero direct greenhouse gas emissions from all of their parks worldwide.

Individuals

People may not have as much power, individually, as governments or large corporations, but each person can still make a difference, no matter how small. Zoë Williams, Jürgen Huber, and Harriet Martin are three examples of regular people that have gone to great lengths to achieve carbon neutrality in their lives.

How YOU can do it — Going Carbon Neutral as an Individual

These are simple and straightforward steps you can take to go neutral:

(1) Work to Reduce

Reducing is more important and more effective than carbon capture actions. It is always better to try and reduce your carbon footprint as much as possible before attempting to offset your remaining emissions. To learn more about what you can do to reduce your emissions, read our article here.

(2) Measure Your Carbon Footprint

There are plenty of online tools to measure your footprint, with varying degrees of accuracy. And soon you’ll be able to use our Carbon Tracker to keep track of your emissions on a regular basis. This will be an app that gives you a continuous score of your carbon impact based on your purchases — think a step counter for your carbon footprint.

(3) Offset

Purchase reputable, effective carbon offsets from sources such as Less, Terrapass, or Gold Standard. Or, if you are able to do so, plant the trees yourself — just make sure they are the types like (example) and (example), or others that are that are efficient at capturing and storing CO2.

(4) Maintenance

Keep track of your output and neutrality input, ideally with regular use of a carbon tracker. People are dynamic, and small changes to everyday activities can lead to more carbon emissions that need to be included for those who wish to remain neutral. Or, better yet, offsetting more than your share will help others that are not doing their part or can’t afford it. That way you will always stay below the threshold of carbon neutrality.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a great first step

This isn’t a fix-all silver bullet. In order to stop all carbon emissions besides organic respiration, we would need to either stop everything we’re doing, which would harm our economy and our well-being, or we’d need to utilize a nearly limitless form of carbon-free energy, which we don’t currently have.

Going carbon neutral is the best way to help slow the accumulating CO2 emissions. At the very least, it would give us a chance to keep our beautiful planet from facing the brunt of the issues that will come from increasing warming, such as prolonged droughts that affect food security or rising sea levels that will displace millions of people. If we all do our small part, it can make a big difference.