Carbon neutral - what’s that?
by Shawn Ashley
This year’s Auckland Seafood Festival was on this weekend, and like previous years it was filled with heaps of seafood, people, and entertainment.
However, there was something a bit different about it this year.
The festival was the first in New Zealand to have a “carbon neutral” status.
What exactly does “carbon neutral” mean though?
I asked many people at the event, as well as a few of those working at the event this very question, and not one of them had an answer.
The basic idea behind being carbon neutral is that one group of people will buy an amount of “carbon credits” equal to the amount of tonnes of carbon emissions that they would produce.
“Carbon credits” can be purchased from various businesses and companies who utilize various pollution and emission reducing techniques. So when one company buys an amount of “carbon credits” and they produce an equal amount of carbon emission, the idea in theory is that they aren’t producing any pollution at all, because the credits they purchased offset the pollution they produced.
In the case of the Auckland Seafood Festival the amount of credits purchased was for 50 tonnes of carbon emission, and they claim to have produced an estimated 50 tonnes of carbon emission. So when you subtract the emission produced from the credits purchased the equation equals zero. It looks good on paper, but when you think about it in the real world it isn’t as good.
In the end the company who purchases the credits still produces the same amount of pollution as they would have had they not bought the credits; and although the company they purchased the credits from might use techniques which produce less pollution both companies are still both generating pollution. Eventually the company who is selling the credits will produce and amount of pollution equal to the amount of credits they sell anyhow.
So although “carbon neutral” is better than nothing, there are better solutions. One example would be to produce less pollution in the first place.
Hey Shawn, did you happen to notice if there was any recycling going on at the Seafood festival?
I meant to ask you to keep an eye out for this last week when we briefed on the story. Sorry, I forgot.
I’d be keen to know:
Did they recycle the food scraps?
Did they separate recyclables - glass, aluminium (”ah-loo-min-um”)?
What about packaging, etc?
You can guess where my money’s going.
I don’t recall seeing any sort of recycling going on. I didn’t actually thinking about it when I was at the festival though, and that is something I should have taken into consideration.