Articles Food and Lifestyle Green By Proxy
| Green By Proxy |
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| Monday, 26 July 2010 10:01 | |
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While the environment has taken a back seat to the economy of late, there has been a lot of talk about carbon trading schemes, carbon offsets and carbon taxes. City living is difficult to make carbon neutral. Strata title living arrangements aren't conducive to installing solar panels or solar hot water. Most city yards and courtyards contain very little in the way of trees to absorb the carbon produced. However, businesses have created “carbon offsets” you can pay for.
A carbon offset is a small fee you pay a service provider and they pay to offset the carbon emissions of the services rendered. For example, Europcar currently charges a fee to offset the carbon emissions of its fleet of cars by paying Greenfleet to plant trees. Virgin airlines pays LMS Generation for carbon credits produced by creating energy from the combustion of the gases produced by landfill. Many other companies provide this service, so its worth asking for. The companies who don't offer carbon offsetting will quickly get the message that it is in demand if prospective customers ask for it! There are electricity suppliers in every state and territory of Australia who provide the option of paying for “green power” - electricity produced by renewable sources, such as wind, water and solar power. The green electricity is more expensive than coal-produced electricity but the cost is minimal when compared to the environmental consequences of conventional electricity. There is another way to pay for a carbon offset, which can cover your electricity usage, car or public transport travel, flights and eating habits. Organisations such as Greenfleet, Bendigo Bank and many others provide the carbon offset service direct to consumers. Greenfleet has a calculator where you can input the details of your electricity bills, petrol consumption etc and determine the number of trees that need to be planted to offset your carbon emissions. Bendigo Bank has a flat rate fee to offset the emissions for a car, a house or a person. There has also been discussion of the opportunity for all Australians to purchase solar panels to gain electricity credits, regardless of where they live. The Immigration Bridge to be built across the Lake Burley-Griffin in Canberra will have a roof of solar panels which will be available for purchase. Details on this project are sketchy at the moment but it will be a great initiative that will have a lot of community support. Now there is no excuse to not be green! For more information: http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=EC134p7a.pdf http://www.greenfleet.com.au/ http://www.greenelectricitywatch.org.au/ http://www.carbonoffsetguide.com.au/ This article first appeared in Mixtapezine |
