We're excited to partner with Future Neutral to take our sustainability initiatives a step further.
Future Neutral is an easy way to help the environment by giving you, our customers, the opportunity to offset your yearly carbon emissions , and then some, by adding carbon credits to each purchase.
What does this actually mean for you?
West 14th gives our customers the option to offset their carbon footprint through their shopping! This goes beyond just the product being bought, and actually goes towards a positive carbon offset to your yearly lifestyle. Our partner, Future Neutral, has helped install a one-click carbon offset at checkout option. Their team of experts then takes care of the carbon offset. See below for 1-2-3 simple steps.
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Step 1: Your Purchase
Each time you make a purchase with participating retailers, you can choose to add offset to your transaction for a small fee. For example, a $110 mini-bag would only cost $3.30 to add offset.
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Step 2: Certified Offset Projects
Future Neutral uses Certified Emission Reduction units (CERs), overseen by the United Nations. The offsets issued are recorded and tracked in the Kyoto Protocol’s registry system. They also support Australian NFP Greenfleet for local offset. View Projects.
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Step 3: Repeat!
Keep using Future Neutral-backed retailers and through micro payments in your everyday life we’ll soon have a huge impact on the course of our planet.
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It might seem like a small amount at checkout, but if only 10% of Australians participated with all their shopping we’d be able to fund over $600 Million dollars worth of carbon abatement programs per year! Small change for big difference.
What are Carbon Offsets?
Carbon offsets actually refer to the offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions, the most common of which is carbon dioxide. As such a carbon offset is used as a shorthand term to describe activities that remove (offset) CO2e from the atmosphere. Some of the most common examples include planting trees and switching to renewable energy sources.
Why do we need them?
The ‘greenhouse gases’ are needed for life on earth, they make the planet warm enough for us to live on, if they disappeared the climate on average would be about 33°C cooler!
The issue is that human activities are adding more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, in particular CO2 (carbon dioxide). This increase in concentration is correlated with increasing the global temperature - and if it gets too warm, that then becomes a bad thing... even a few degrees of warming causes huge changes that we are already seeing.
In particular extreme weather, changing climates and positive feedback loops that accelerate even more warming. We are now facing a climate change emergency and the world’s average temperature has increased by 1.5 degrees from pre-industrial levels.
Carbon offsets are therefore really important to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Projects
Future Neutral supports a number of projects as directed by their team of experts and advisory council. These include United Nations certified projects, and locally a partnership with Australian non-profit Greenfleet.
