It's in the trees!

Phew! We've finally offset last year's carbon emissions by pledging four trees to be planted in Manchester.

Ethos public relations monitors the journeys taken in the course of business and in 07-08 we did over 15,000 miles. Using the Carbon Footprint calculator we worked out that this equates to 3.24 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

As a tree absorbs approximately 1 tonne of carbon dioxide emissions in its lifetime, we pledged four trees through Carbon Footprint, to be planted in Manchester. These trees will more than offset our business travel carbon emissions for the year and would not have been planted without our support.

As we are in a serviced office, it is not possible for us to measure our office energy usage / carbon footprint, but we take lots of steps to make sure we minimise this - see our social report. By monitoring and offsetting our travel emissions, at least we are doing something to address this part of our carbon footprint.

However, I know that carbon offset is quite a contentious issue. Is planting a tree now, which will take maybe 100 years to absorb a tonne of carbon dioxide, the best solution? Although we aim to minimise our emissions, for those emissions we do create, we think it is important to do something to offset them, but are there other, better solutions? What do you think?