Why Your Business should Offset NOW!

• To make a positive statement about your commitment to a carbon reduction strategy for your customers, employees and stakeholders.

• Attract new customers and retain existing clients through the positive marketing impact of demonstrating your carbon reduction programme.

• Help engage your customers as partners in the fight to reduce carbon.

• Make carbon reduction a central part of your company’s business process in preparation for future government legislation.

• To help encourage your employees to take ever increasing responsibility for their personal carbon footprints.

• To help lead the way as a guiding light and drive a change in the attitudes towards our environment.
  
  
• Ensure your place in your customer's supply chain - more companies insist that they will only purchase from carbon neutral suppliers .

• Secure your eligibility for being included in tenders.

The Findings of Committed Businesses.

• Carbon offsetting can become a very powerful feature of a product or service.

• By using offsetting as part of an overall carbon reduction programme is a major step forward in becoming completely carbon neutral (which should be the goal of all businesses and individuals)

• Helping your customers with their own carbon reduction programme by choosing products and services from a carbon responsible supplier like you.

Before a company makes any decisions, it is important to understand just what it’s carbon footprint is. downwithcarbon.org offer a service that enables companies to do this.

About the Carbon Footprint of a Business.

This is the way of measuring the impact of a business’s carbon output on the environment. Carbon is the major greenhouse gas and is now accepted has being the most harmful to the environment. All activity needs to be taken into consideration. We would be pleased to discuss with you all the carbon producing aspects of your business . This will enable us to work together to ensure that we have covered all contributors to the business’s carbon footprint.

Once this is completed the Company can take steps to reduce it’s output through obvious rationalisation made in travel and energy use. This will only go part of the way. The next phase is the investment in Carbon Offsets supporting projects that offer true additionality.       

What are Carbon Offsets (and why is additionality important).

Carbon offsets enable businesses (and individual offsets through personal offsets) to reduce their carbon footprint. Offsets invest in a variety of carbon reduction programmes – often in another part of the world. It works like a simple balancing of the scales. For example, if a business is responsible for the output of 100 tonnes of carbon from its day to day activities, it can invest in a project that is expressly designed to reduce carbon, thereby offsetting the 100 tonnes, which it has already created.

In addition to their other projects, downwithcarbon.org has been instrumental in setting up a bio diesel manufacturing plant that is capable of offsetting many thousands of tons of carbon by providing alternative fuel to fossil based diesel.  By investing in this, companies can offset their carbon emissions; safe in the knowledge that without their commitment through carbon offsets, the project would not have been possible. This is the basis of the term additionality. It is important for businesses to ensure that all projects they invest in through the purchase of carbon offsets meet these critical criteria. Without additionality, there is always the danger that carbon offsets may end up in the ‘black hole’ of a project that would happen anyway.

The volumes of carbon offsets in projects that offer true additionality are normally limited. It is possible to ‘stock pile’ offsets in this way that cannot then be used by others. We believe this is likely to happen at government level where countries not using their offsets (or not committed to carbon reduction) could sell them to those with greater carbon output who are striving to reach global targets for carbon reduction. 

What’s in it for Business?

As already mentioned, offsetting will demonstrate a business’s green credentials. It will certainly help with marketing, PR and brand association with a carbon reduction or carbon neutral policy. Offsetting will demonstrate a company’s commitment to reducing global warming in a practical and measurable way. An organisation that is carbon responsible will attract interest from investors and please shareholders.

Offsetting can be a very effective for marketing programmes to improve customer retention, attract new customers and the best employees. It is essential to minimise the risk of being removed form a supply chain on environmental grounds, which is certainly set to become increasingly an issue for businesses. As climate change issues become ever increasingly at the forefront of social and political agendas, then businesses will bear the brunt of legal requirements and regulation.

Companies can offer ‘carbon rewards’ to their customers to provide a way of offsetting the carbon output of a product, for example with motor vehicles. There are many choices and great scope for innovation. At downwithcarbon.org, we’d be delighted to discuss your ideas on this and provide you with some of our own that could fit well into your business. Or you can go directly to the Business Calculator and offset your company's carbon emissions online. You will then receive your official downwithcarbon.org Offset Certificate.  

:: downwithcarbon.org supports the CARBON DISCLOSURE PROJECT  

:: downwithcarbon.org IS A NOT FOR PROFIT ORGANISATION