How Carbon Offsets Work

What is a carbon offset?

Carbon offsets are a practical and effective way to address climate change and encourage the growth of renewable energy.

With them, you can counteract your personal carbon emissions—your “carbon footprint”—while contributing to a more sustainable future.

What is a “Carbon Footprint”?

All the products and energy you use have associated emissions. The most straightforward example might be the CO₂ emissions from burning natural gas to heat your home. As for the new jeans you just bought, there are emissions associated with growing the cotton, from the fertilizer used and the carbon lost from the farmland soils, as well as emissions from the energy used to manufacture the final product and to transport it to you. There are emissions every time you use your washing machine and dryer, and again when those jeans get tossed into the garbage in a few years, when they end up in a landfill and ultimately emit methane. The combination of emissions caused by your home, transportation, and daily life is known as your “carbon footprint.”

There are many ways to reduce your carbon footprint—you can drive an electric or hybrid car, use LED lighting, and eat lower on the food chain, meaning less meat and dairy. View more green tips.

How Carbon Offsets Can Address Your Carbon Footprint

Native’s Help Build™ carbon offsets accomplish more than most offsets: they help fund new projects that reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

But even if you take every energy-saving step, if you are a 21st-century human, you will leave a carbon footprint. Using carbon offsets, you can counteract the greenhouse gas emissions that you cannot avoid causing.

How Help Build™ Carbon Offsets Work:

Help Build carbon offsets are a new, progressive type of carbon offset with a bigger impact than conventional offsets.

Typically, when someone buys a carbon offset, the money goes to pay for a reduction in greenhouse gases that has already occurred. This purchase supports an existing project.

However, sometimes community-based projects don’t have enough funding to be built in the first place.

Help Build™ carbon offsets bridge the gap.

You purchase carbon offsets from a project in advance—that is, before the emission reductions occur. By doing so, you play a key role in funding its construction, enabling it to cut greenhouse gas pollution on your behalf for years to come.

By purchasing a Help Build carbon offset, you're funding new projects that will reduce carbon emissions and help communities grow.

To calculate your carbon offset, we use internationally recognized methodologies to determine the emissions that your project will reduce. Once generated, all carbon offsets also undergo third-party certification to ensure that they truly occurred.

For details, visit our certifications and projects pages.

Take Action

Offsetting your carbon footprint with Native is simple:

1. Calculate your carbon footprint
   Quantify the greenhouse gas emissions from your household, travel, or business.
2. Offset your footprint with Native carbon offsets
   Purchase carbon offsets through our carbon calculators or our quick purchase tool.

Questions? Read our FAQs page or contact us at 800-924-6826 x200 or [email protected].