May 22nd, 2007 - Carbon offset for 90% reduction?
This month, my church is participating in an “alternative way to church” to encourage the greening of our lives. Since I cannot bike, walk, or carpool to church (50 mile round trip, with a toddler), I decided to buy carbon offsets for my drive. I actually purchased them for the entire year! I chose to use The Carbon Fund because it’s a non-profit (and is a 503C charity!). Using their calculator, I estimated that if I go every week, it cost about $17 to offset the drive all year (I don’t go every week, but sometimes I end up going twice for other events). I was quite surprised that it was so low–I originally was just going to offset for the month, but figured I may as well do the whole year at this cost.
Unfortunately, the project is state-wide, and there are no provisions for being counted as participating if you offset instead. But maybe my idea will be passed on to the organizers next year!
I’m not sure how to account for this offset in my 90% reduction calculation. I looked back at yesterday’s data, and I’m not sure how I figured it. Today, I’m coming up with 100 gallons per person per year. I think I used numbers from Quicken at home and here I’m just using a generic 6000 miles instead (which is more, actually, than we drove in the past 6 months). Anyway, if I actually went to church every weekend, that would be 2600 miles over a year! Maybe I do go less often? Anyway, I offset once a week, so we can count that anyway. So, if I offset our usage to 3400 miles, at 3 people, that’s about 57 gallons per person per year or 11.4% of the average.
Unfortunately, it’s no longer winter and we tend to run more errands in the spring/summer (things like garden supplies!) and I don’t mind driving after dinner anymore (since it’s still light out), plus I go garage saling almost every Saturday. I will try to cut down on that, since I don’t really need a ton of stuff anyway….
October 15th, 2007 at 1:55 pm EDT
[…] I felt good earlier this year when I offset my driving to church. I’ve changed my mind. A new study from Tufts University recommends The Carbon Fund only with reservations. One of those is that they underestimate the emissions and have a very low cost set to the tonnage. I should have gone with Native Energy, or one of the other three they recommend. Maybe next year. […]