Whilst making arrangements for air travel recently, I came across a website that allows a person to make a financial contribution to offset the carbon footprint of the flight to be taken.
Here is the link for those of you who may have interest. https://flygrn.com/offset-carbon
Whether a flight is for business, pleasure, or family reasons, there is no doubt that flying is not exactly eco-friendly from an environmental point of view, so perhaps we should all consider the value in contributing to offsetting the carbon emissions caused by air travel in order to keep our own personal carbon footprint as low as possible. Itās not mandatory, although perhaps it should be, but I urge you to do your bit to help stem the rate of climate change.
Itās been said that we are the first generation to know about how we are contributing to climate change, and probably the last generation to be able to do something about it.
Please give this your serious consideration, and letās all do what we can to avoid aggravating climate change for our childrenās and grand childrenās sake.
Laudable idea Robert, an easy way would be to add a ācarbon offsetā levy to the cost of each flight. I have thought about this for some while and itās crazy how far ordinary stuff that we use everyday travels either by air or sea. If we stopped buying cheap goods/clothes from the far east or ate locally grown food this would have a big impact on CO2 emissions. Only yesterday we had a food delivery from the UK and some of the items had been produced in the EU, shipped to the UK and then driven 600 miles to our doorstep.
There is one huge problem - the effect on the world economy.
We do not fly.
However, if we had to fly to Germany for family reasons we certainly would do so.
We heard about carbon offsetting on a tv programme recently and agreed that if forced to fly we would pay the extra.
In the morning and lunchtime here in the Clunysois the sky is criss-crossed with con trails.
Iāve been carbon offsetting for yearsā¦itās not new. Even eurostar has been offsetting its train trips for well over 10 years - which makes me happier to pay the extra cost to go by train than a Ā£20 easyjet journey back to London. So slightly sad that it seems to be something that a group of intelligent open minded people arenāt that aware of? But it is not a panacea, thereās a lot of debate about the validity of the schemes, and whether it just deludes people.
We make a big effort to live as responsibly as we can, without strolling round in a hair shirt living on gruel. And itās not that hard as luckily we are in the happy position of being able to fund responsible choices, like using āgreenā electricity.
But even if we werenāt there are lots of small actions that help, like where ever possible using locally produced goods and foods, avoiding out of season products that have to be grown in heated greenhouses or flown across the world. Those sorts of things.
Like Robert I feel we have a duty to the next generations to try to change direction. So well done Robert for raising an important issue.
It cost us quite a lot of money when we renovated our buildings, but we installed a heat pump, 3 x 90m wells, solar water heating panels and, of course, double glazing and excellent insulation.
We also have a forage which gives us 2,000 litres of water per hour.
We plan our trips out so that we can get as many things done in one journey as possible.
We have planted an orchard with 30 fruit trees, not so sure about the yield this year because of the awful weather, we have soft fruit and a potager.
We also keep chickens.
Hi Jane, Yes, you are absolutely right and I wish that more people would see the light and consider the carbon footprint of what is offered for sale before making their purchasing decision.
Another thing that we try our best to do is to avoid products with unnecessary packaging. For example: Does the stout plastic bottle of vitamin pills really need to be in itās own cardboard carton?
Robert, there are different totalsā¦how much to pay to offset x tonnes of co2ā¦on different sites at different dates, for a selection of different projectsā¦ One way is to pay 77 Euros for 6 tonsā¦which is the price for planting one tree.? My tablet makes it quite difficult to flip around relevant w/sitesā¦so Iām not sure. My own plan is to plant as many trees as I can affordā¦on my own bit of landā¦its almost in the river so almost all grown fastā¦a non-weeping willow is ginormous, two giant horse chestnuts, 15 fruit trees, plus othersā¦my plan is to put useful treesā¦maybe fruit trees in any available spacesā¦ I prefer to do that to offset my two long haul trips per year. I hope that works out OKā¦ The birds love itā¦I love living in a forestā¦my bit of land used to be covered in weedsā¦now under the trees, thereās not enough light for weedsā¦It would be interesting to know how to manage very small areas of landā¦to be most effective.
Perhaps Iām doing the wrong thing entirely! Iāve got a bit of cliffā¦that trees like to grow on, tooā¦currently needs more trees because when too tallā¦they fall over in big winds. Tried growing veg but never successfulā¦ Fruit trees are better, for me, and all the wildlife, blossom in spring, plusā¦they usually eat the fruit before I doā¦ My bees, in the wall, seem to have leftā¦but they do that from time to timeā¦
Wellā¦ Iām going to stop going home for lunch - thatās 2 journeys a day saved! Iāll take my own packed lunch - imagine if everyone did. Yeah just try and imagine that !
I have lunch at work, that saves a 55km round trip, I use thin cloth drawstring bags for shopping en vrac and refuse to buy packaged stuff except for teabags which I buy in bags of 1040.
And I plant trees. Quite a lot of trees not conifers either.
The important thing is that the subject is both thought about and talked about.
Everyone can do something to assist, and it is all the little things that will, when taken together, add up to the solution. Whether it is cutting out a journey or two, planting some trees, turning down the thermostat on the hot water heater, or not eating air freighted food, we can all do something to help, and in the process we may actually find it to be beneficial to the contents of our wallet in the long run.
Glad to hear itā¦ we seem to be losing an awful lot of broadleaved treesā¦ and then they replace with Pineā¦ Ughā¦ that doesnāt help the planet to breathā¦
