Our everyday activities cause CO2 to be released into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change
You can calculate the carbon emissions you generate to better understand your impact on the environment.
Reduce your carbon footprint to the best of your abilities and offset what you can’t reduce by helping to conserve forests.
By offsetting, you help combat climate change, protect biodiversity, and support owners of old-growth forests.
Why offset?
We all have a carbon footprint. We can decrease our footprint by biking, travelling less, shopping locally, and growing our own veggies, but we cannot avoid emitting carbon completely.
It can seem hopeless, but there is another option! You can reduce your carbon footprint by funding projects that draw carbon down from the atmosphere and protect endangered forests.
Our Biodiversity Carbon program offers you this option. When you offset with through our online Carbon Neutral Planet platform, your donation provides landowners in the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve in Mexico with funds to regenerate their forest plots. Landowners eliminate extractive activities such as cattle grazing, logging, and poaching from their land and prevent forest fires, allowing young trees to grow and the forest understory to regenerate itself. These healthy and growing forests can then absorb greater amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, mitigating climate change. According to conservative research approved by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), each hectare of restored forest sequesters 3 tons of CO2e per year.
Moreover, biodiversity benefits as the forest biomass is restored. Endemic, threatened, and endangered species of amphibians, birds (i.e. great curassow, bearded wood partridge), and mammals (i.e. jaguar, puma, coati, kinkajou, and tayra) benefit directly from the protection and restoration of their habitat. That’s why we call it Biodiversity Carbon.
Take measure to make your carbon footprint bring life back into balance!
Sounds great! How do I start?
- First, calculate you CO2 footprint, choose one of our CO2 packages, or customize your offset amount. Remember, you can offset for yourself, for a business, or dedicate the offset as a gift.
- Once you complete payment, you will receive a personalized CO2 Offset Certificate and access to a secure account where you can track your carbon footprint history.
- We assign your donation to a forest owner who commits to conserving and regenerating his or her forest. Landowners’ obligations include attending training sessions and meetings, monitoring and reporting from the field, and eliminating livestock grazing, logging, and hunting from the property.
- As a result, young trees and bushes are able to grow, reestablishing the forest understory and, subsequently, wildlife. The new growth means an increase in carbon captured and stored in forests. According to conservative research approved by the IPCC, each hectare of restored forest sequesters 3 tons of CO2e per year.
- Your offset not only combats climate change by protecting a forest rich in biodiversity, habitat for a variety of plant and animal species, but also economically compensates forest owners living in conditions of extreme poverty for the ecosystem services that their forests offer to all of society.
Breakdown of your donation:
80% of your donation is transferred directly to the landowner as payments for ecosystem services. The rest of your donation ensures on-going MRV, training and follow-up sessions for participating landowners on subjects such as the forest ecosystem and the flora and fauna we seek to protect so that they become long-term stewards of their forests, and covers the cost of continually updating the Geographic Information System, the database of available carbon, and the distribution of funds to beneficiaries.
How can you help
