[berkes]

A local group is building FairSharesApp, which is an app that tries to make you aware of the additional costs to a product. And allow you to buy that off.

AFAIK they only do CO2 emissions, yet. But when I spoke to them, they had more planned.

My problem with such products, is that they will reach the people who need it less: people who already care and try their best, will be able to do a little better; but people who don't care, won't install and use it, yet their impact is probably relatively much larger.

[forgotmypw17]

I don't understand, how can you undo it by paying for it?

[berkes]

If you fly from Rome to Barcelona, you could "offset" the CO2; often directly when buying that ticket.

This works in two ways: 1. they "plant trees" and/or 2. they buy && hold or destroy certificates.

Certificates are limited regulated and deflationary. E.g. the EU buys X certificates from the market every year and destroys them and grants less certs each year. Every company that emits "significant" CO2 needs to have, buy or be granted certs to do so. The setup makes those certs more expensive, so every year, there's a tradeoff: do I buy certs, or do I invest in lowering my emission.

Apps such as Fairshares allow public to buy (pieces of) such certs.

[hycaria]

Because they plant a tree or something. (Just greenwashing)

[berkes]

"planting trees" is not "just greenwashing".

When agricultural (or similar) lands are transformed back to forests, that has a real and direct effect on the ability of the environment to absorb CO2 emission.

Obviously it needs to be done well, which often is not the case. Quite often there's no tree planted IRL, just some "promise to probably do so in some future" sold instead. And quite often the tree is planted but then abandoned (so that each 2 years everything dies off and the same plot can be re-used to "plant more trees"). But that is not the only modus operandi.

[majewsky]

CO2 compensation cannot just be done by planting trees, either. I'm sending a monthly donation to a project that goes into remote villages in Africa where people still cook on open fires and provides portable stoves to them. Since a stove loses much less heat than an open fire, the villagers can cook the same amount of food with only a tenth of the original amount of wood, thereby reducing CO2 emissions.

[indigochill]

Curious how much CO2 is emitted by fires in remote African villages compared to, say, power plants in industrialized countries, particularly since all the literature I've seen pins the CO2 issue of late on the industrial revolution.

Still, does sound like a good efficiency gain for those villages.

[forgotmypw17]

How much CO2 is emitted in the travel, all the supplies that the travelers have to bring, and the production of the stoves and presumably the refillable fuel containers for them? Meanwhile, the wood has already absorbed CO2 in the process of growing from the air...

[nathell]

Can you share the project?