In the near future no active Club will be able to avoid CO2 emissions completely. Even for Clubs that achieve best practice, there will be a rest of CO2 that needs compensation. The best way of course ist to start your own local CO2 compensation project! Let us inspire you to take action and use one of the many alternatives to reduce CO2 in your spheres of influence.
The following different project ideas will be explained in more detail below, also concerning their potential to reduce CO2 emissions:
Plant and maintain trees
Re-vitalise a marsh that went dry
Restore seamarches, mangroves and salt marshes
Increase recycling in your community
Stop the use of one-way plastic in your community
Erect photovoltaic panels to produce electric power
Erect a windmill to produce electric power
Build a battery storage for renewable energy
Improve insulation in a public or NGO building
Invest in an electric vehicle for your town
Invest in a new heating system in a public or NGO building
Invest in LED lighting in a public or NGO building
Establish a repair shop in your community
Reduce the waste of food in your community
Ensure better farming practices that enable more carbon to be stored in the soil
What is Your project?
Here are the detailed descriptions of the projects:
Plant and maintain trees
If a big tree (e.g. a beech) is planted, gets enough water and grows for several years, it will approximately absorb 12 kg of CO2 per year during its phase of strong growth. Be aware that planting trees is important but also a limited solution – if you wanted to absorb the amount of CO2 that is emitted by the USA, you would have to cover 2/3 of the worlds land mass with trees – and that is only for the CO2 emissions of the USA. But planting many trees is still very important, please follow this link to learn more about Rotary forests.
Stop the use of one-way plastic in your community
If a school or any other organisation in your community is still using one way plastic, you can start a project to reduce this. If you save e.g. 2 kg of new PET one-way plastics on 180 school days, you have a yearly reduction of up to 1,5 tons of CO2e. For more ideas concerning the reduction of plastics please visit the website of the project „EndPlasticSoup“, that we strongly support.
(Detailed descriptions of other ideas will be added below – please ask us if you want to know the CO2 reduction value for your project or one of the ideas above)
Tell us about your compensation projects, so we can add them to this list via email to contact@becomesustainable.org
There are many other different alternatives for your sustainability project. Links to further Rotarian projects presented at the „Rotary Institute Basel“ you will find here.
Enclosed please also find a list of local and global projects that we can recommend:
For example RC München-Residenz is currently preparing the „Munich Sustainability Award“ together with other clubs in Munich, the idea is derived from and inspired by this wonderful project: Rotary Sustainability Award – Rotary Nachhaltigkeits-Preis, RC Landsberg am Lech, RC Ammersee-Römerstraße, RC Buchloe, RC Wörthsee
(list under construction)