They also shouldn’t cause harm to indigenous and local people or ecologies. To be considered high quality, offsetting projects should be additional (meaning they wouldn’t have happened otherwise) and permanent (they can’t go up in flames from, say, wildfire, which is a risk with tree planting). But in theory, high-quality removal projects should eventually lower the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. The potential benefits and pitfalls of carbon removal and avoidance offsets, in particular, have been well reported elsewhere. And it’s really hard as a shopper, mid-checkout, to know whether the extra money you’re spending will go toward effective and lasting climate reduction projects. Will your money eventually help cut atmospheric carbon? If you’re weighing if you should pay for carbon neutral add-ons in hopes that you actually offset shopping emissions, one-to-one and more or less in real time, you can walk away, full stop. Instead, going carbon neutral at checkout means you’re donating to what is “essentially a philanthropic effort,” said Danny Cullenward, policy director at the nonprofit CarbonPlan, a research group that has provided pro bono advice to Stripe (a company that helps e-commerce sites process online charges) about its carbon removal program. No matter how rigorously vetted a program might be, you’re never literally negating the emissions associated with shopping online-even when companies that support these projects claim to make your purchase carbon neutral today. If you’re weighing if you should pay for carbon neutral add-ons in hopes that you actually offset shopping emissions, one-to-one and more or less in real time, you can walk away, full stop.įor starters, these projects may take years to get going-let alone to reach their promised carbon reduction potential. But the whole thing is very complicated and opaque. Carbon removal seeks to lock these climate-change-causing gasses away more or less permanently carbon capture and storage, for example, are emerging technologies that would trap carbon in substances like carbonate rocks (PDF).īy giving money to support such projects, the company you’re purchasing from promises to indirectly counteract some amount of greenhouse gasses produced by shipping your purchase. Generally, offsetting projects aim to avoid greenhouse gas emissions or pull greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, often through carbon sink projects like reforestation or wetland restoration. If an item’s checkout, shipment, or delivery is described as carbon neutral, it usually means that the company has partnered with a third-party payment service (such as Shopify, Stripe, or EcoCart) that helps fund carbon offset or carbon removal projects. Instead, you can take a few effective steps to actually reduce your climate impact. We recommend that you leave the carbon neutral box unchecked next time you shop online. And experts say you should be skeptical of those promised climate benefits. Those few dollars might cause a temporary warm glow effect, as environmental psychologist Lorraine Whitmarsh put it to me, but it won’t last. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. In theory, for a few extra bucks, you can negate the greenhouse gas emissions caused by your online purchase. Online shoppers are sometimes given the choice to pay a little more to make their purchase “carbon neutral” or use so-called carbon neutral shipping.
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