We are doing a fair amount of traveling this summer and fall and that has made me start to wonder about my Carbon Footprint and offsets and how much they would cost, and what the diference was between driving or flying. So I went to www.carbonfootprint.com and started calculating and here is what I got:
Total Flights Footprint = 0.12 metric tons of CO2 Ticket cost $604.00
Total Car Footprint = 0.09 metric tons of CO2 Gas Cost $77.52
Total Pathfinder Footprint = 0.23 metric tons of CO2 Gas Cost$180.88
Then I started to wonder about offsets and how much they cost and even weather or not they are legit. Through www.carbonfootprint.com I had to buy a minimum of .333 Tons was $3.92 for a Clean Energy Portfolio Offset. All of the other types required a 1 ton minimum. Thats when I discovered it was a UK based website. LOL
So then I started doing some research and found this post at the HuffPost Green it had 3 sites listed as legit.
Native Energy $14.00 per their calculater
Terra Pass $5.95 for 1,000 lbs
The Climate Trust This is a silly website I couldn’t find where to purchase offsets anywhere.
I really liked the Terra Pass website it had options to buy a annual offset for a family of four or for a yearly hybrid car and the like. Plus the clearly say how the money is used!
After all of that research I’m still not sure what to do
Wow, you really did quite a lot of research! I should take some time and find out what my own carbon footprint looks like. We’re not traveling overseas this year (at least I don’t think we are) so we’re going to be saving on that part. Very interesting stuff, isn’t it?