Drive Yourself Carbon-Neutral

One hot air balloon = 4 tonnes of CO2. The average UK driver also emits around 4 tonnes of CO2 each year. As we can’t think of a good punchline linking your car with the balloon, we’ll get straight to the point: 22% of all CO2 emissions in the UK come from road transport.

Every litre of fuel you consume emits CO2. So maybe it’s time to take the challenge – become CO2 neutral and help reduce CO2 emissions, one car at a time.

This is what Peter Mather at BP (yeah, we know…), says about the campaign: “targetneutral is a positive, practical and straightforward step that BP is taking to help drivers help the environment. We are taking the lead because our extensive research shows there is a huge demand for such a scheme and a general feeling from customers that they don’t know where to start.”

And becoming a targetneutral driver doesn’t cost the earth. The average UK driver only needs to spend around £20 a year. It’s easy too. All your funds are invested in projects that prevent or remove an equivalent amount of emissions (that you produce from driving) from the atmosphere.

Go Generous at their website here.

Back to actions listing

Discuss

  1. harmsy harmsy
    Thrapston, GB , 13 Oct 2007

    This sounds like a good idea, BUT surely if the cost of offsetting (in this way) all a car’s CO2 emissions for an entire year is just £20, shouldn’t the government just use the tax raised on petrol to pay for these offsets? I mean, come ON! The cost of filling my Civic Hybrid’s petrol tank is around £36. I pay MORE than £20 tax included in this £36 so why can’t a part of this tax include the offset? What do they do with all the tax they raise in this way? If it’s supposed to be a disinsentive to drive, the fact that most of the time there are no alternatives (and indeed I cause less pollution driving my hybrid to Cumbria than taking an equivalent train – and it’s cheaper), makes the whole thing a complete farce.

  2. AJC AJC
    London, GB , 06 Mar 2008

    I know offsetting is the last resort after trying to reduce emissions overall(I am trying hard to drive ‘greener’). And this is a way to neutralise emissions one car at a time.

  3. Smudge Smudge
    Martock, GB , 26 Mar 2008

    Well, I’ve paid for carbon offsets for our 2 cars and the domestic gas we use (we’re on renewable electricity). It came to £55 for a years emissions. This seems too good to be true – so it probably is. But “climatecare.org” seemed to answer all my obvious sceptical questions.

    However, it does seem so cheap compared with, say, the £1800 cost of converting my car to run on LPG, which would reduce its emissions by 30-40%ish. Or cheap compared to £2500+ to fit solar powered water heating. (I am still looking into these option anyway).

    Well I’ve done it now. Time will tell whether I’m a mug or not.