Carbon Offsets

So, as you know one of my requirements this year is that I am going to write one blog every month about ways I am trying to reduce my environmental impact. I don't guarantee that they will all be successful, nor do I claim to be a scientist, but I have been doing a lot of research this month on air travel and it's negative effects on the environment.

My family and I are going on a vacation to an island called Roatan off the coast of Honduras. We're all very excited, although this will be our last big trip for quite some time, I've decided to just let everything go, and enjoy this exciting trip with my family.

I've heard a lot over the years about the impact of air travel on our environment. I'm not going to go too much into the science of flight, and why it impacts our environment so much more than say, driving, but I am going to share a link to the article that inspired me. I've purchased carbon offsets for this flight for myself and Dan. Although I don't have a lot of disposable income at the moment, I decided I wanted my flight to be more of a reflection of the true cost to our environment. I had no idea what carbon offsets even were before a couple of months ago. Sure, I'd heard the two words put together, but in my mind they held no meaning. Fortunately, David Suzuki comes to my rescue once again.

It took a lot more research than I thought to make a conscious purchase. I wanted to carbon offset to go to a company that is dedicated to change and not just someone looking to make money off of something different. There are a lot of different carbon offset programs and they're held to different standards, so it took me some time to decide where I wanted my money to go. Unfortunately, the only Canadian program I could find, I couldn't buy offsets for directly which I found disappointing and ultimately I decided to purchase offsets for the protection and rebuilding of rain forests in South America. There are some fascinating ideas in the works in many places though and I had a fun time learning about them. The only Canadian one I could find was the capture of methane gas from a landfill. I thought that was a super interesting idea, and it's not like we don't create enough trash to fuel the world 10 times over. Anyways, here's the link that started it all. I hope you all get a little something out of this month's project.

http://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/reduce-your-carbon-footprint/travel-sustainably/