Akademik

n.

A donation or other act that aims to remove a certain amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to compensate for the same amount of carbon dioxide that someone or something has added to the atmosphere.

—carbon offsetter n.

—carbon offsetting pp.

Whether you want to stay in your current job and green your workplace or make a radical career shift, there are a number of steps you can take. The more conservative-minded can start by enlisting colleagues to form a list of goals for their office. "Whether you're a secretary, a bookkeeper or a senior executive, you can take actions to make your institution greener," says Doyle. Ideas include buying ecofriendly office supplies (see thegreenoffice.com: http://thegreenoffice.com), asking your company to buy carbon offsets for corporate travel and pushing for more opportunities to work from home so fewer employees have to commute on a daily basis (for more ideas, see treehugger.com: http://treehugger.com).

—Anna Kuchment, "Going Green at Work," Newsweek, June 11, 2007

Concert promoters, venues and artists are increasingly going green, teaming up to reduce or eliminate the environmental impact of their industry and raising awareness about green products, technologies and issues by utilizing the strong connection between artists and their fan bases.

The basic message: Reduce, reuse, recycle.

For the multibillion-dollar concert business, that means:

Staging carbon-neutral concerts using green energy sources whenever possible or purchasing carbon offsets for energy used, such as planting trees to help with future carbon reduction.

—Richard Harrington, "On the Road: The Green Revolution," The Washington Post, June 1, 2007

Everybody knows that growing green plants soak up carbon dioxide (CO2) and power plants dirty the atmosphere with it, but AES Corporation may be the first polluter to directly link smokestacks with trees.

From its Virginia headquarters, the privately owned utility is negotiating to buy 146,000 acres of subtropical forest in Paraguay to help compensate for the 13.4 million metric tons of carbon its Hawaiian power plant, under construction on Oahu, is expected to emit as carbon dioxide from 1992 to 2027. ...

AES has already completed one carbon offset project, linking its existing Uncasville, Conn., utility with the planting of 52 million trees in Guatemala.

—Julia Michaels, "Power Company Gets Green Idea: Trees-for-Carbon Swap," Christian Science Monitor, May 29, 1991