Hello Charlie is a carbon positive workforce. We offset all our team's personal emissions both from home and and work. It's one of the benefits that we offer to all our team members. What does it mean to be a carbon positive workforce? First of all, we need to discuss what carbon emissions are.
What are carbon emissions?
Carbon emissions are one type of greenhouse gas emissions. Other greenhouse gases include nitrogen and methane. Carbon emissions generally refer to carbon. We create carbon dioxide when we breathe, and when plants and animals decompose. The earth does a lot to keep these emissions in balance. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, and the ocean does, too. Carbon naturally cycles through the air, soil and water in a balance that supports life.
But then it gets tricky. Humans burn fossil fuels, releasing carbon and other greenhosue gases into the atmosphere. We cut down trees and burn them, or leave them to decompose, emitting more greenhouse gases. And we're cutting trees down faster than they're growing, so there's not enough trees to capture the carbon created by the burning and decomposing.
Then we create even more emissions by the way we live our lives. When we produce and consume food, manufacture products, build roads, or go somewhere in a vehicle, we're producing carbon emissions. The problem is that we're creating more emissions than the planet can capture. Carbon dioxide prevents heat from escaping into the atmosphere, so the planet begins to heat up.
What can you do about carbon emissions?
Firstly, you can try to prevent them. Then we try to fix what's already been done. Here at Hello Charlie, we're trying to reduce the emissions that we create in the first place. And we're trying to offset the emissions we've already created by investing in projects that will help to capture carbon.