A polluted shade of green

photo credit: The Joy Of The Mundane

Once the workshop of the world, Britain becoming a master of turning something into nothing. A welter of new companies has sprung up to collect money from conscientious travellers keen to offset the greenhouse gases they generate while flying. The Carbon Trust reckons the market is growing by 60% a year, but there’s growing concern this nascent industry may be harmed by the sharp practices of some of its operators.

Because offset providers use different methods to calculate emissions, customers are given widely differing estimates of the size of offset they need. And some of the solutions touted are dubious. It’s clearly time to clean up this murky market, but regulators must tread lightly. The challenge is to impose a single, transparent standard, without strangling an imaginative industry with red tape.