Eco Concept: Going carbon neutral

I receive a fair number of media releases at my post at Homemakers magazine, and I love reading about the terrific things some companies are doing to try to produce the stuff we need while curtailing their output of greenhouse gasses (GHGs).

Today I received word from Aveda that they’re purchasing wind credits against 100 per cent of the power they use in their main manufacturing plant. I believe they’ve been doing this for a while, and I’m glad they’re sticking to their commitment.

Last week I was having a look at the Attitude dishwashing tabs package for an upcoming article on dishwasher tabs in Homemakers magazine, and I noticed that Attitude has joined Carbon Zero. That means that they’re purchasing carbon offsets for the manufacturing, distribution and retail sale of their products; those offsets are essentially used to plant enough trees to absorb the carbon used to get you the dishwasher tabs.

A couple of months ago I heard about the Motorola w233Renew, a mobile phone made with recycled plastic from those big water-cooler water bottles. The phones are also carbon offset, for the manufacturing, shipping, retail sale, and even the power the consumer uses for a two year period AND the recycling energy needed to take the phone apart at the end of its life. I was really impressed with this end-to-end approach to energy use.

All of these firms also reduced the energy they use in the first place; after all, it will cost them less in carbon offsets if they aren’t using as much power. But it’s also the right thing to do. And the sustainability expert at Motorola told me that the company learned how to dramatically reduce their shipping costs by sending out phones in smaller boxes, a practice they plan to use for their other phones. It makes green sense, whether we’re talking the environment or the wallet.

If a product you’re considering buying has been carbon offset, are you more interested in purchasing it?