Okay, so what if you’re carbon neutral?
Joel Makower has a great commentary about the whole “carbon neutral” bandwagon and how every corporation wants to jump on. The problem, he says, is we don’t really have a standard definition of what the term means, meaning any company can make the stretch by calling themselves or their services carbon neutral. He fears the rush to use the term as a marketing tool will water down the meaning, and at the same time discourage what we really need to do: reduce our energy consumption. Makower has a great anology, comparing a company claiming that a service is carbon neutral to a person who orders a Diet Coke with their Big Mac and Fries. The idea is to reduce calories, not just offset them. Are we doing ourselves a disservice by using claims of carbon neutrality as an excuse for our excess consumption? It’s worth the four-minute read.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca