1. Reduce Your Own Carbon Footprint

The first and foremost objective for most companies is to reduce their own carbon usage. There are a variety of places that each corporation can assess. First would be their own energy usage. There are some simple things, like lightbulbs, for example, that can reduce energy usage. Or green web hosting companies.

Another item is to reduce single use plastics. And another would be to have a virtual office to eliminate employees driving to and from work.

2. Buy Existing Carbon Credits

If you’ve done everything you can and implemented all strategies to reducing your corporation’s carbon footprint and you still have more to go, then the next step would be to invest in other projects that sequester carbon.

There are carbon credits available for purchase from a variety of methods for sequestering carbon, including reforestation, regenerative agriculture, mangroves, ocean projects, clean energy and more.

But you need to be careful as standards and protocols can vary and there are some bad actors in the industry. We recommend Verra, Gold Standard and Canopee and are constantly evaluating other trustworthy accreditation bodies that have a strict protocol for how carbon credits are certified.

3. Conservation and Protecting Existing Tropical Forests

Certifying carbon offsets for protecting existing forests is only allowed in tropical rainforests and developing countries. For countries like Canada and the United States, this is not permitted. However, in tropical rainforests with a high biodiversity and alarming rates of deforestation, this is where certification makes sense.For countries in the Amazon Rainforest, especially with Brazil and Bolsonaro at the helm, deforestation has increased at alarming rates. There is less investment and easier paths to certification than with a reforestation project and there are swaths of rainforest that need protecting. And a lot of rainforest needs protection in the Amazon and other areas around the world.

4. Reforestation

Taking clear cut land and old cow pastures and converting them back into rainforest is a great way to create carbon credits! This is the method that produces the most amount of carbon credits per Ha. Because it’s taking a decertified or pasture area and converting it back to rainforest.  Plus there is the added benefit of restoring biodiversity in the most biodiverse areas on earth. So these carbon credits are the gourmet selection of carbon credits. There is a bit more investment and time involved, but the rewards are greater at the end.  And the earth desperately needs forest to be reclaimed, biodiversity to be increased and trees to be planted.

5. Regenerative Agriculture

Collaborating with farmers and investing in regenerative strategies can help farmers to produce carbon credits. Traditional monoculture depletes the health of the soil biome and the amount of carbon sequestered in the soil.

There are various strategies to help farmers in agriculture worldwide, to produce more carbon credits and sequester more carbon in their soil. There are regenerative agriculture methods in most crops that can be used to improve the health of the soil biome and sequester more carbon in the soil.

There are even more methods within agriculture, as well as mangroves, the oceans, wastewater, clean energy and other areas that carbon can be sequestered.

After first utilizing all strategies to help your company reduce their own carbon footprint, the next steps are to see where your company can help invest in projects within agriculture or reforestation to help sequester carbon, improve biodiversity and get to net-zero.