What green habits to you have - Page 4

Carbon Offset Credits are the biggest load of feel good about being green bullshit ever. You wanna offset your footprint? Plant a tree or help fund a local garden/new park/park renewal.

Skip the plastic bag whenever possible...

I have a hard time believing you are serious.

If you really feel guilty about all of the carbon emissions (which would be emitted regardless of whether or not you were on that flight ) why not actually do something productive to give back to the community?

Feed an underprivileged family... adopt a child in a third world nation... donate that cash to Doctors without Borders. Or, if you are already doing this... do more of it.

Buying carbon offsets is an absolute waste of capital and a total scam, IMO.

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FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!

I do some green things and then some things that piss green people off...

as far as green...

All of my appliances are new and energy efficient
use those new green light bulbs throughout the house
bought my fiancee a clean diesel
recycle cans, plastic, and paper
Have a compost pile
Drive a motorcycle to school/work whenever the weather permits that gets great mileage and has great emissions

as far as pissing off green people
Keep my apartment and house at 68 all of the time even when I'm not going to be at one of them for a while
Drive a land rover with about 1000 pounds added to it (bigger tires, brush guard, winch, roof rack, etc) that gets about 17 miles per gallon
Have a 35 zr donzi that burns the hell out of gas (It is technically my dad's but I take it out several times a week to relax)
Leave a lot of lights on
drink bottled water
Eat meat at every meal
Water my grass 3-4 times/week

I like carbon offsets because they promote causes in other countries that I care about - such as reforestation; I disagree that they are not productive. I don't have tons of disposable income, but it's also a more convenient way (for me) to contribute to organizations that are outside the country, as often the funds are going to reforestation and promotion of environmental rehabilitation in parts of the world that I'm impacting but am not living in.

I like to spread my chartiable contributions and volunteer time around. So while I contribute to and volunteer with a few different organizations, I also purchase carbon offsets. I suppose I could just give all of my disposal income to one group, but that's not my style.

YMMV.

See my response above, but I wanted to add - I'm not clear as to why funding local parks/planting trees and purchasing carbon offsets are seen as mutually exclusive.

Doing something local benefits your community. Even if its not really your community but somewhere else in the city. Carbon Credits are BS because you have no proof as to how the money is appropriated. The company (probably a NPO) distributes the money the way they see fit. That could mean that only a small percent of your money actually goes towards the cause, the other parts are lost to paying wages/bills/etc.

One can arge that there is a global benefit to reforestation even if it isn't an immediate "ooh, look I planted those bulbs and now they're tulips yay!" sense of satisfaction.

But as to your point about how funds are appropriated - you're definitely right, but that's an issue for all not-for-profits (local and global). Charitable organizations are rated on charitynavigator.org, so one can see how much is spent on projects and how much is spent on admin costs.

Specific to carbon offsets, groups like the Environmental Defense Fund actually review projects and rate them to give people an idea of what they're supporting when they buy the off-sets. It's not necessarily a situation of throwing money into a black hole, never to know what happened to it.

But again, purchasing climate offsets doesn't preclude one from ALSO giving to one's community. A person could give $1000 to one charity, or split it up among different organizations. Some choose the former, I choose the latter.

I don't really do anything that I wouldn't have done in the past. In fact, it's kind of bothering me that people just decide to "go green" as if it's the cool thing to do. I recycle every scrap of recyclable stuff that I can. (And I am aware that shredded paper is not recyclable, as are those paper boxes that go in your freezer.) I do things in the dark sometimes (small things that take a second) because I'm lazy and sometimes because I don't need light. Whenever I go shopping for something small like a DVD or a box of cookies, I just ask them not to put my stuff in a bag. I'd prefer that over carrying one of those green bags around. I reuse shopping bags for lunch bags until they fall apart. There's no use in buying brown paper bags and throwing them away each day when a paper shopping bag is FREE and can last a month or two, depending on where it's from. Donate your old clothes! Oh, and sometimes I pick water bottles and cans off the ground and throw them in my trunk and get money for them. I'm not exactly a green freak though. A lot of times, I put my computer on sleep and keep it plugged in overnight without actually turning it off. Not that this is totally relative but it really bothers me when I see a tag saying "95% cotton, 5% organic cotton." What the hell is 5% organic cotton going to do for the environment? Mix it in with the rest of the cotton and it's like it's not even there. 70% bamboo, 30% organic cotton at least makes sense but if you're going to do 100% cotton, you might as well just pick whether or not you want to do organic.