Go greener

Almost everything we do or consume every day is made possible by the burning of fossil fuels. Throughout human history, from the first communal fires that provided heat for a family or a tribe, through the invention of the coal-fueled steam engine and internal combustion engine, to the massive electric generation plants of today, carbon-based fuels – wood, coal, oil, gasoline, natural gas – are burned. As they burn they emit carbon dioxide which accumulates in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming and climate change. 

When we heat or cool our homes – with oil or natural gas in our furnaces or electricity coming out of the socket – we are increasing our carbon footprint. When we eat we are consuming food that was grown with fertilizer made from natural gas or was shipped in trucks using gasoline. The meat we eat comes from livestock and poultry that digest grass and other grains and emit methane which enters the atmosphere and is even more toxic than carbon dioxide. The clothes we wear were made from natural fibers that required fuel to plant and cultivate or from artificial plastic fibers that used petroleum products. And, of course, the cars we drive burn gasoline or diesel made from oil or electricity produced in carbon-based power plants.

By calculating the amount of carbon-based fuel that is burned in the course of our daily activities or in the production of the goods and food we consume every day we can approximate the number of tons of carbon dioxide that our lives contribute.

By purchasing carbon offsets from ReBalance, you help fund emissions reduction projects in communities across North America – including renewable energy produced by wind, hydro power, solar power, reforestation, and methane capture at dairy farms. All ReBalance projects meet the highest standards for quality, monitoring, and independent verification.

It costs very little to offset your carbon footprint. In fact, you can make a difference for as little as the price of a cup of coffee per week. Simply calculate your carbon footprint here and then decide whether you’d like to offset 100% of that amount or choose the amount you prefer. ReBalance invests the money in carbon-reducing projects like wind power, solar power, hydro power and capturing methane from cows. Learn more about these projects.

Carbon dioxide is a gas so we tend to think that it has no weight. Yet in fact the weight of CO2 that we account for is enormous. An example will help explain. Suppose you live in a home that is heated with heating oil. Every couple months a big truck pulls up and delivers hundreds of gallons, weighing thousands of pounds, into your oil storage tank. A furnace burns that fuel, generating heat in the process. The heat is circulated through your house and the carbon dioxide goes up the chimney. 

As we learn in grade school, matter cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed. In this example, the heating oil is turned into an almost identical amount of carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. What was once thousands of pounds of heating oil has now been turned into an almost identical number of pounds of carbon dioxide.