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This article again is a remnant of the old website. The concept of carbon offsets we thought could be explained easily via a few writeups. However, we learnt a valuable lesson that it is a far more complex task than we first thought it was. In fact, a friend had remarked: “How can you expect people to pay for carbon offsets when they already default on government taxes?”. A very true statement indeed. In any case, I thought this article would be useful for further discussion on this site.

Carbon Footprint

The term “carbon footprint” can be applied in more sense than one. The actual meaning depends on the context in which it is used. Some of the commonly used definitions for quantitative discussions are:

• Carbon footprint is the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) attributable to the actions of an individual (mainly because of their energy use) over a period of one year. For example, you may have a carbon footprint of about 3 tonnes CO2/year owing to your home use, automobile fuel and other such activities.
• Carbon footprint can be seen as the total amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases emitted over the full life cycle of a product or service. For example, an ipod nano has 31kg carbon footprint by virtue of the energy used for its production.

In a more general sense, carbon footprint is a “measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide”. It is meant to be useful for individuals and organizations to conceptualize their personal (or organizational) impact in contributing to global warming.
As the issue of global warming and climate change becomes more and more important, it becomes necessary that we calculate the extent to which each human activity is responsible for the CO2 emissions. Carbon footprint is the result of this calculation.

Reduce your footprint

Following are a few tips to reduce your carbon footprint sorted category-wise.

Carbon from transport:

Keep tires properly inflated
Car pooling
Use a bicycle for short distances.
If you own a car and a motorbike, use the latter over the car wherever possible.
Switch off your vehicle at a traffic light
Replace old or worn out air filters
If possible, fit your vehicle with an LPG kit.

Carbon at home:

Turn lights off when not in use
Change from incandescent lighting to CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamps) or LED
Reduce red meat consumption
Recycle whatever you can, including cell phones
Turn off appliances at the wall when not in use. For example, the cell phone adapter.
Buy locally grown food whenever possible so that you discourage unnecessary transportation of food

Carbon at business:

Reduce paper consumption. Use electronic documents instead.
Reduce flights wherever possible. Instead of personally flying for a meeting, try video conferencing.
Install more doors and keep windows closed to avoid AC leakage.
A rainwater harvesting facility at your office could save a lot of energy required for pumping water.
Switch off computers and lights at non-working hours
Plant trees around the office to cut on air-conditioning bills

Offset your footprint:

Offsetting your carbon emissions remains an important gesture and planting of trees is a wonderful way to do so.
The first thing to bear in mind about buying trees as carbon offsets are that they should be considered as a last resort option. Surprised to hear this from us? Our intention is that you try to reduce your carbon emissions as far as possible and then offset the remaining through trees.
Try everything you can to reduce your carbon emissions first, such as the use of CFL bulbs or even LED’s for lighting; efficient use of water heaters and reducing meat consumption - there’s so much you can do that can actually save you money while benefiting the environment.
Having reduced your carbon footprint as much as possible, now it’s time to offset what you can’t. Planting trees are the best way to do this.
Another reason for planting trees is that we have wiped out so many forests in the past 200 years of industrial age that there are only three large ancient intact forests left around the world. One in Brazil, the second in Canada and the third in Russia. The Indian region does not have any large intact forest left except for some small patches here and there.