Explaining Carbon Offsets

Can you explain a carbon offset easily? A piece on NPR did better than most.

Carbon Offsets can be difficult things to explain: we hear this from TerraPass members, telling us of their experiences explaining offsets to their friends; we know it ourselves when we try to write for this blog or our website explaining how small amounts of money can make real differences to the environment.

And we see it on a regular basis in the media, as journalists and commentators grapple with the issue and try to make sense of the proactive individuals and companies that reduce their carbon footprints and use offsets to balance what remains.

So it was refreshing to hear a piece on NPR’s Quest program this morning that explained (better than we sometimes do ourselves!) how offsets work, and how consumers should pick between the different companies that sell them.

You can listen to the piece here