Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Greenback to Give Back

This week's Low Impact Living newsletter introduced me to EcoMom...which is a fabulous idea that, naturally, makes me incredibly uneasy. I couldn't manage the "Mommy and Me" groups did when the Monkey was little and I can't fathom the idea of joining a local EcoMom group now. For as many awesome women as I know and love in my life, I'm still terrified of group-like female alliances. I blame the two years I lived in the sorority house in college.

*shudder*

Anyway! EcoMom has a blog with some helpful tips, things you can do right now, etc. Most of it was stuff I have now read a million times (change your lightbulbs, power down, walk places, eat locally, etc.)... Buried in the middle of all the things I'd heard, however, was one thing I hadn't...so I thought I'd share!


Greenbacksearch.com is a green search engine!! It's powered by Yahoo, so you get roughly the same sort of results...and, ostensibly, they make a carbon offset contribution based on the number of searches conducted through them. Since my greening has not yet extended to the regular purchase of carbon offsets for my carbon use, I'm labeling this one "easy" and giving it a go.

Next, I suppose I should decide if I should purchase offsets for the flight I'm taking to Indiana later this month. What about you? Are you buying offsets yet? And are you offsetting everything for a carbon-neutral life or just the big things?

5 comments:

towwas said...

I think the whole offset business is too sketchy to invest in it yet. Nice idea, but I don't think people have really figured out how to sequester carbon. I think the only solution for me is not to fly and, uh...I think we all know THAT isn't going to happen.

MonkeyMom said...

I can see your point. The idea that I sort of like about "carbon offsets" (assuming I understand it correctly) is that the companies doing the "offsetting" make an investment in alternative energy sources (wind, solar, etc.)...which is, I think, a pretty solid idea (given that we're bound to run out of dinosaur bones eventually).

towwas said...

Ah, ok - I was thinking of the kind of offset where they plant trees or something. That makes more sense.

Unknown said...

Some offset companies buy carbon credits on emissions markets (like the Chicago Climate Exchange), then permanently retire them. I like that kind of offsetting - it's like taking candy from multibillion dollar corporations that want to pollute.

Why aren't there any dads' groups? I have to believe there's a big, big percentage of Ecomom-spouses that are just as involved in their children's rearing, so where's our group? Huh?

Labelmaker said...

Let's say we use Greenback Search as our search engine of choice . . . when we refer to our online research, do we say 'I Greenback'ed that - here's what I found . . . I dunno. It doesnt flow like the word "google."

This could be a problem.