Over the last few years I've started to become a lot more aware of various carbon emissions created by myself and the people around me. From non obvious things like the food we eat, to the worst offenders such as travelling. In the 21st century it's increasingly hard to not have a negative impact on the planet by simply just existing and going about our daily lives. I've curated a list of the ways I'm trying to offset my impact with small lifestyle changes.
These are in no particular order, but generally the ones I use more often are closer to the top.
Ecosia
For over a year now I've been using Ecosia as my primary search engine. It was a little disorienting at first, having used Google for so long, but I slowly grew to love it and now Google feels a little alien to me. The beauty of this passive approach is that every time I search (hundreds and hundreds per day) it contribute towards tree planting and funding projects that help our planet. About every 45 searches plants one tree, so I can sometimes plant many in just one day by making a tiny adjustment to my search behaviour.
Ecosia Shop
A quicker way to increase that tree count and also add to your environmentally friendly wardrobe, is to check out the Ecosia shop. I have so many of these now, and they're such high quality. New designs are released regularly and each t-shirt plants 20 tress. There's also hoodies and jumpers, if t-shirts aren't quite to your liking.
Compensaid
If you do a lot of flying, this is a great way to pay back the emissions debt by also planting trees. The extra twist with Compensaid if you can offset instantly by funding synthetic fuel for use in passenger and commercial airlines. A slightly more costly option, but it's a much quicker ROI than the 15-20+ year it takes for a full tree to grow and absorb enough Co2.
Ecologi (formerly Offset Earth)
https://ecologi.com/marcqualie
Shortly after setting this up I completely forgot about it, and I now (at the time of writing) have 798 trees planted with a total of 46.64 tonnes of carbon offset. This cost me very little, required no effort, and had a decent impact on the planet.
Use my referral link and we'll both get bonus trees in our forests.
Feel free to share the carbon offsetting initiatives you're part of and I'll also continue to expand this list regularly as I find more services.