offsetting for earth
Something really made me smile this week.
I’ve started running a virtual pub quiz (I’ve done 2 so far) on Friday nights to get people together and have some fun during this truly bizarre situation we find ourselves in. After they enjoyed the first one, I had a couple of attendees ask if they could give me a couple of quid for my trouble.
I thought about it and the following week, I followed up with the 27 teams, pairs and individuals who came on Friday night with some options. They could Buy Me a Coffee, buy my book or they could donate to some causes that I thought were worthwhile.
One is Meals For the NHS - these guys say,
‘You donate meals. We order from local restaurants. Hospital staff eat. Tonight.’
An obviously good set-up.
The other. option was something that I’ve not yet told anyone. I was going to write a post about it but it felt grandiose given the size of my monthly donation. I sort of have now but at least I told my friends first.
I’ve become an Offset Earth donor.
These guys are a Bristol-based charity that support worthy tree planting projects around the world, enabling you to offset your carbon footprint or if you like, become carbon positive.
What made me smile was including them in my email and then a day later, getting 10 extra trees planted in my forest as someone had clicked through and signed up as a donor themselves.
My professional life now makes a small contribution to tree planting initiatives. Tree planting is one fantastic way that we can individually mitigate the damage that we all do to the planet. According to Swiss university ETH Zürich who led a research project into the issue, it ‘isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one’.
There was an interesting discussion in the Radreads Slack group a couple of weeks back about the accumulation of subscriptions to independent creators and how you’d quickly exceed the cost of a bundled offer, like a Sky TV subscription.
Someone made the point that your purchasing decisions need to reflect the world you want to live in. If you want to spend fuck all on your consumer goods, you should be able to reconcile that decision with its consequences, wherever in the world they occur. Our problem is one of disconnection, from our environment, from a sense of collective responsibility and from the consequences of our actions.
It seems though that those consequences of our disconnection and our inaction are catching up. Recent occurrences oddly echo the biblical plagues. I have no doubt that this is coincidence but it’s an apt one. Another view of the current crisis is that it’s the first time in history that the world is uniting to solve a common problem. There aren’t winners and losers in this one. There are winners or losers. It’s in our personal and collective interest to act with others in mind.
Another reminder of getting some skin in the game regarding your purchasing decisions came when looking at the Crowdcube update from my dear friends at Petalon Flowers. They had a customer testimonial from Annie:
As a female entrepreneur it’s very important to me to invest in companies which align to my values, both personal and professional. Petalon is innovative - Florence set out to break the mould of people buying mediocre, overpriced and unsustainable flowers. I respect this decision and the challenges she has faced competing with mass market brands with bigger budgets. I also wanted to invest in a company that embraces diversity and sustainability. Petalon has always been predominantly managed and run by women.
If you believe in something then you need to back that up. An easy way is to share it. A more difficult way is to spend some money on it, particularly if there are cheaper alternatives. Sometimes you need to compromise your wallet to back things that you believe should exist.
Anyway - these things were reminders that we should support endeavours that we believe to be important. Aligning with Offset Earth is one of mine.
What will yours be?