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Carbon Offset Your Print!

November 27, 2008 Want to "green" your print marketing further than you may already have? Try purchasing carbon credits.

Why buy carbon credits? No matter how "green" your make your marketing, you are going to create at least some carbon emissions in the process. Carbon emissions will be emitted in the process of heating and lighting the building, keeping the lights on, fueling the cars of the employees who work there, firing up the press and postpress equipment, and producing, distributing, and using ink and paper, and other functions, including distributing printed products to recipients.

You can reduce that footprint by moving to more eco-friendly printing processes, using recycled paper, using the power of databases to reduce the volume of unnecessary print, and taking other steps. Once you've reduced your footprint as much as possible, you can then purchase carbon offsets to minimize (or "offset") your impact even further.

How Do Carbon Offsets Work?

How do carbon offsets work? EcoBusiness puts it this way:

Carbon offsets enable individuals and businesses to reduce the CO2 emissions they are responsible for by offsetting, reducing or displacing the CO2 in another place, typically where it is more economical to do so.  Carbon offsets typically include renewable energy, energy efficiency and reforestation projects.

This is a very politically correct explanation, but in essence, instead of eliminating your production of carbon emissions, you pay for someone else to do it for you. In other words, you can keep asking the printer to fire up the press, but you pay someone else on the other side of the world to plant enough trees to offset the carbon emissions you have just become responsible for creating. You offset them.

Prices for carbon offseting are sold or purchased by the credit. When you buy an offset credit, you are buying an offset for one metric ton of CO2 emissions. The idea is that by buying credits for the carbon you produce, you are — in essence — reducing your carbon footprint to zero.

Prices per credit vary based on who is selling them. EcoBusiness provides a price comparison for carbon offset providers on its website. You can choose by type of offset (reforestation, renewable energy production, and a variety of others). You can choose from companies that are accredited or verified.

How Many Credits Do You Need?

Before purchasing carbon credits, you need to decide how many credits you need or want to buy. You can start by asking the printer if it has created a carbon footprint of its production operation. If it has, it may be able to tell you how many credits will be necessary to offset the carbon emissions created the length of your individual print job.

Of course, carbon offseting is no substitute for reducing your own carbon footprint, but it's just one more step that we can take.

Have questions? Comments? I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at info@digitalprintingreports.com. For more information on primers for marketers and small businesses on digital, 1:1, Web-to-print, and personalized URL applications, visit Digital Printing Reports. You can also keep up with all of my posts on EBS, The Inspired Economist ("Greening Print Marketing"), and other blog sites by following me on Twitter.

Posted by Heidi Tolliver Nigro on November 27, 2008 | Comments (1)