Green Sand Inc. Makes Donation to offset carbon footprint
Green Sand Inc. (GSI) announced today that it has offset its carbon emissions with Carbonfund.org the country’s leading carbon offset organization. After implementing strategies to reduce their footprint directly, GSI’s carbon footprint was calculated at 40 tons. GSI’s donation through the CarbonFree Small Business program offsets 70 tons of carbon dioxide, making GSI a carbon-negative company. This commitment places GSI as an environmental leader in the architecture community and demonstrates proactive steps being taken in the fight against global climate change.
A visit to the Carbonfund.org web site revealed that the 70 ton offset that GSI made is the minimum allowed on the site. A review of participating companies showed that most, having reduced paper and electricity usage usually offset their remaining electrical usage. None seem to offset any part of their manufacturing business. The largest company participating, Dell, only offsets the electricity used when owners power up their individual PCs.
While the investments developing clean energy, increasing energy efficiency and reforestation made by Carbonfund.org are noble, it is unclear how much of an impact such activity will make. Roughly calculated 28.7 billion US tons of C02 was produced by humans in 2004 (reported by the US Energy Information Administration). This does not include the amounts created naturally. Assuming 6 billion people, this calculates to approximately 4.78 tons per person. Thus the 70 tons of carbon offsets purchased by Green Sand Inc. are enough to offset the CO2 “produced” by nearly 15 people.
Now if only enough companies would follow suit to cancel out the CO2 produced by the other 5,999,999,985 people, global warming and/or climate change would end. Or would it? Carbonfund.org and other carbon offset organizations can’t tell us.