November 17, 2006

Retailers Offer Customers ‘Carbonfree’ Shipping Option

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Four retailers, BetterWorld.com, Evogear.com, 3r Living, and Alonovo.com, are using a new program from Carbonfree.org and Carnegie Mellon University’s Green Design Institute that offsets shipping-related carbon-dioxide emissions.

The company’s aren’t paying for the program themselves, but are providing customers with a Carbonfree shipping option that, presumably, will cost more than traditional shipping.

Carbonfund then uses offset funds to support renewable energy projects such as wind and bio-fuels, and energy efficiency and reforestation projects.

In creating Carbonfree Shipping, Carbonfund worked with a research team at Carnegie Mellon to design a proprietary method for determining how much CO2 is produced by each shipment.

According to Carbonfund, the shipping industry accounts for more than 600 million tons of CO2 – more than the CO2 emissions for the entire country of Canada.

“The application we’ve developed for this shipping program is scalable and can easily be modified to meet the needs of other businesses,” says Professor Scott Matthews, project leader for Carnegie Mellon’s Green Design Institute. “This methodology could have a very broad effect on the way we address commercially-produced CO2 emissions.”

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