2018 – My Carbon Offsets and Donations
Part of my ongoing commitment to reducing my impact on the environment, both for me as an individual and as a business, is to be as efficient as possible and offset any emissions I produce.
Exciting hey?
This means employing sustainable web design and development techniques in order to build efficient websites, using renewable energy and so on (more detail on this here).
However, there will always, inevitably, be some emissions from my everyday activities. So for this I undertake two activities – carbon offsetting and contributing at least 1% of my sales to environmental non-profits.
My carbon emissions
This year, 2018, I calculated my carbon emissions as an individual and as a company and then contacted someone I know at Worldview Impact, in order to offset my emissions.
My emissions came in just under the average so we rounded them up to the average and offset that by paying to plant mangrove trees in Thor Heyerdahl Climate Park in Myanmar.
The average emissions are 10 tonnes of carbon per person, so this along with my business and my ‘1% of sales’ contribution lead to me donating £250 which breaks down as follows:
– £10 each tree = 25 tons of CO2 offset
Why Mangroves?
– Mangroves store huge amounts of carbon and retain it in the soil (up to four times as much as tropical rainforests)
– Mangroves provide a wide range of benefits in addition to storing carbon, reducing flooding and erosion from storms, acting as nurseries for fish, and filtering pollutants from water
– Mangroves are also incredibly important to humans – being heavily used for food, timber, fuel and medicine
– They also offer protection from catastrophic events, such as tsunami, tropical cyclones and tidal bores and can dampen shoreline erosion
– Research indicates at least 35% of the world’s mangrove forests may have been lost between 1980 and 2000
So with this in mind, the benefits to re-planting mangroves are so diverse that it made sense to donate my annual contribution to this cause.
My Carbon Certificate