Offsetting most of my CO2 emissions for the past year has been on my to do list for several months and today I finally got round to it. Its a crude fix to the climate change problem, but its better than no action at all.

This has been a bad year for me CO2-wise as I booked to go to the February wedding in New Zealand of an old friend, Sol Harris, just before watching Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth last summer. (Sol – I must confess that despite being joint-best man, if my flight had not already been booked, there is no way I would have gone to New Zealand after watching the film and being reminded just how vulnerable our planet now is – you’d have got a video message!) In fact, given the state of the climate crisis, I will think long and hard before making any more long distance flights. I now cycle everywhere and use public transport, but after a lifetime of flying I still have a lot more CO2 to offset.

Anyhow, I made the trip to NZ, and Sol and Sally had a sensational beach wedding, but back home I’ve had to decide what company to entrust with offsetting the CO2 my round the world trip generated. The choice of companies is now pretty overwhelming.

Eventually I opted for Australia-based Climate Friendly who are endorsed by WWF (my former employer). Climate Friendly’s website is simple and easy to use, and their CO2 offset projects meet the Gold Standard, which means they are pretty reliable when it comes to quality control.

The site calculated my emissions at 12.5 tons (a £120 charge) and allows me to make a payment of £6/ quarter going forward which will offset a lot of the CO2 emissions from the electricity I use at home and work (unfortunately it didn’t include emissions from food and other services). You can check out the e-invoice Climate Change provided, which has the details of the CO2 I emitted on each leg of the round the world journey, and also the e-certificate. Let me know if you find an offset company with a user-friendly website and Gold Standard projects here in the UK (or even London!).