But what is a carbon footprint?
In a nutshell, your carbon footprint (and this definition is courtesy of Treehugger.com) is
...the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases emitted over the full life cycle of a product or service,...,from the computer used to find this article to the next meal you eat.....to the shoe that will leave a physical footprint on the ground the next time you walk outside.
Of course, here at Green Office Projects, we would add including the furniture and cubicle components you use to outfit your workplace.
Some people leave larger footprints than others. Do you commute 90 minutes twice a day in stop-and-go traffic (and if you live in Southern California, you know who you are...) in a gas guzzler? Do you have a new 3500-square-foot home for the three of you? Do you fly for business often?
Or do you grow a goodly amount of your own vegetables, bike to work, wear only all-cotton clothing you found at Goodwill and live in a multi-generational home that’s 60 years old and just 1500 square feet in size?
You get the idea. The more we consume, the larger the carbon footprint we leave.
So, since you probably live too far away from the job that sustains your family to bike to it, and since you may have to travel on business a lot to keep said job, and since you bought an SUV two years ago when gas was still affordable and everyone and their pet’s therapist wasn’t trying to sell a similar behemoth and now the market is saturated with used large cars, there’s supposed to be an alternative – purchasing what are known as carbon offsets.
Wikipedia defines a carbon offset as a “financial instrument representing a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”
But is this really a good way to offset the damage you do to the environment? Is it really just throwing money at a problem and then walking (or more appropriately in this context, driving) away with nary a thought to whether or not your carbon offset purchase has really helped?
The pros and cons of purchasing carbon offsets are many – too many to go into in this post, so we’ll blog about them tomorrow...
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