Habitually Good

Have you heard about Global Warming? Of course you have. Who hasn’t? Do you know your environmental impact? Basically, do you know how much contribution your household and lifestyle make to the global CO₂ emissions? Are you doing something about it? What can you do?

Well there are many things you can do of course: change your life style; ride a bicycle to work; conserve electricity; trade your SUV in for a smaller car; don’t burn trash; use energy-efficient appliances; and many more such things. Even if we do all this, we will still have an impact on the environment that we can’t do anything about. We can’t stop living now, can we? So, what do we do?

Depending on where you live, you have options to offset the impact of your living by purchasing. Till recently, this was not available at an individual level in India. So what is Carbon Offset? Although there is an excellent description on Wikipedia, a quick explanation can be: A carbon offset is something you buy by investing in an activity/project/business that is aimed at reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases in the environment. These businesses/activities range from planting trees to renewable energy projects. So basically, you are paying for removal of the emissions that you produce. This helps in two ways: one, your impact on the environment is negated; two, enterprises who are working to make the earth a better place get funding which would otherwise be hard to get.

So, how does it work? Here are the basic steps:

• You calculate the amount of CO₂ produced by you and your household using the large number of calculators present on the internet. This will typically give you how many tons of CO₂ you release into the atmosphere every year.
• You then locate a Carbon Offset Project that you want to invest in. For this particular activity there are many portals which act as intermediaries and ensure authenticity of the projects involved.
• You buy the equivalent (or more, or less) Carbon Offsets of your environmental impact. Usually, this is followed by you receiving some sort of a certificate.

Now, in India this was not possible till now. The first and only (I think) portal which does this is now available; it’s called: CarbonYatra. This portal allows you to purchase Carbon Offset credits. The other problem that I have always faced is that all the calculators which would allow you to calculate your emissions were oriented towards the western countries. Well, CarbonYatra provides a calculator for the Indian scenario and it’s probably the only one that is doing that. The calculator is here.

India happens to be at the forefront of the clean revolution, but I will blog about that some other day. However, for now, here’s our chance to contribute at a personal level.

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