Please can I have effective ideas for offsetting my commute?

[scattercushion17]

Good evening .Posting in chat for traffic. Like many recently I've made strides to live a more eco friendly lifestyle.

Unfortunately my current situation means I have to commute in my car at the moment. I would change this if I could but I can't. Looking into offsetting carbon it seems geared towards corporates or tree planting.
I understand tree planting take to long to grow to have an effect but I may be wrong? I also understand it may be open to exploitation, ie, how do you know the tree ( or whatrver) has been planted etc.

Does anyone do this or suggest a solution please?

Thank you.

I think there is a scheme where you buy EU carbon permits- means that companies can't buy them so it cuts emissions. I will try and find out details.

Thank you! I wasn't sure what to make of my climate which seems to be a reasonable company.

Could you car share with anyone? Or even work from home/a closer office a day a week. I think realistically though everyone just needs to do what they can. Without massive changes at government level it all looks very doomy anyway, sorry

I don’t think I would pay a company to offset for me. You just can’t have any control - maybe they all drive elderly diesel cars to work and go on 3 abroad holidays a year! Better to just focus on things you can do personally - reuse, recycle, buy less, eat less meat etc.

As in my climate was one company i found offering a similar sounding scheme.

No unfortunately sharing isn't an option although flexy working is slowly dawning.

Ah thanks, just wondered what others did. I agree its not a great outlook but i dont have a huge knowledge on the subject.

Tree planting dosen't actually help long term, the tree takes in carbon when it's growing but then it dies and is either burned or left to rot and almost all the carbon gos back into the atmosphere. At most the carbon will be out of circulation for 100 years, probibly less depending on the type of tree.

That might seem like a long time but its just a blink of an eye in relation to the life of the planet's ecosystems. The carbon in oil has been stored underground for hundreds of millions of years, to offset it's release you need something that locks up carbon permanently, or prevents it's use elsewhere.

Ah right ok, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for the information. It's all quite depressing!

Does your employer have a sustainability policy or a sustainability at work type of group that you can join? If there are a lot of commuters in the same situation doing something at a corporate level might have more impact.

Grow your own veg thus using fewer food miles?

Make your own compost?

Empty the car of all extra stuff.

Don’t eat meat - you’ll save massive amounts of climate impact that way

Trying to think of reductions in other areas if you can not offset.

How about looking at trying to restore boggy areas that are drying out and starting to release carbon?

Apologies for disappearing.

Thanks for all your suggestions, the peat boggy one sounds interesting. I feel Ivam doingvwhat I can so have covered off many ideas - thank you though. Just the commute I'm struggling with.