Carbon Positive

Like many teenagers, my daughter cares passionately about the environment. And when, earlier this year, she urged me to do more for the planet, I decided it was time to explore how I could do that.

I thought through some of the common objections I’d heard in conversation with others:

They would say that it was prohibitively expensive. That they alone wouldn’t be able to make any substantial difference. And how could they be sure their contributions were going where they were most needed?

But I knew these were all ultimately assumptions, and as with any assumptions, I set out to test them with some real research.

I soon found plenty of cases of people and businesses taking action that was good for the planet. Microsoft, for example, has pledged to become ‘carbon negative’ by 2030 (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/16/microsoft-carbon-emissions-negative-2030), removing more carbon from the environment than it creates.

This made me think that if a business of Microsoft’s scale could commit to this kind of change, then why couldn’t I do the same with Incendiary Blue? So I started to look at ways to make it happen.

This led me to Offset Earth (https://ecologi.com/), a platform that allows you to contribute to global climate crisis solutions. I then found (https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx) and asked my team to answer a few questions about their behavior and lifestyles to help work out our combined carbon footprint.

With this in hand, I went back to Offset Earth. To my surprise, I discovered that I could make us all carbon positive for a relatively small financial contribution each month. And that’s not just for our days at work, that’s for every hour, of every day.

Offset Earth tracks our positive impact, showing how much carbon we’ve removed from the environment, and how many trees we’ve helped to plant. And it also shows this equated to long-haul flights, journeys in the car, sea ice that has been saved from melting. Click on the link here to see how we're doing: https://ecologi.com/incendiaryblue

Given recent changes–working from home during the lockdown, moving out of our central London office to a quieter location that’s closer for all–it’s likely that we’re doing even better than these numbers suggest.

But more than the rising numbers and the tracked progress, what Offset Earth really shows is that it’s not just possible, it’s easy to make a positive difference to the environment. And it really takes very little time and money.

All of this goes to prove that all those common objections to my daughter’s questionnaire wrong. We all have the power to do more for the environment. And now like her, I’ll always ask, ‘why not?’ Because if we all take these small steps, together we can make a big, big difference to the future of our planet.

Mark Edgington Founder