Carbon Offsets have become really popular these days. Brands make you feel good for all your consumerism habits by “offsetting” everything.

Just pay a few extra dollars at the checkout and clear your conscience. I have always been skeptical of this.

And a recent report revealed that more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by the biggest provider are worthless.

The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading provider and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation.

If you really want to plant trees and help the planet, there are NGOs like ReWorld that are doing a great job.

They are working with Proyecto Titi, a Colombia-based nonprofit to build a new tropical forest and biodiversity preservation in northern Colombia. The aim is to reforest and restore over 10,000 acres of land.

And you can be a part of this World's First Community-Funded Tropical Forest.

Tell me more

Moving onto this week’s content. So today, we have-

• A startup that wants to eliminate energy waste in buildings

• Another startup preventing food waste from ending up in landfills

• Some good news

• Stat of the week

• Ways in which I can help you

💡This startup wants to eliminate energy waste in buildings

Did you know?… Monitors, printers, laptops, and heaters are small power devices. In our homes and offices, we mostly leave them in standby mode, plugged in via power sockets. Their individual energy consumption might seem small but together, it often exceeds 40% of total electricity usage in most commercial and office buildings. All this energy is wasted. In a world dealing with an energy crisis, we can’t afford to do this.

Save money and emissions…UK-based measurable.energy is on a mission to eliminate this small power waste from buildings. They’ve built unique smart sockets and have combined them with machine learning and software. These smart sockets identify, measure, and eliminate small power waste.

• Whenever devices are plugged into these sockets, they monitor their energy use and report granular real-time data.

• Based on this data, building owners and consumers can monitor and reduce energy wastage- helps them save money and reduce emissions.

• The smart sockets can also automatically turn devices on/off to avoid wasted energy.

Instilling behavioral changes…In addition to this, there’s a light on the smart socket with a color range. It displays the live carbon intensity of the electricity. Green indicates that the electricity is coming from renewable sources while red indicates fossil fuels. This helps drive behavioral change for consumers, pushing them to use more energy when it’s green. What a beautiful and effective solution!

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🍲 This startup is helping keep food waste away from your homes…and landfills

I’m sure you would’ve heard this…If food waste was a country, it would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter. A lot of resources go into putting the food on our plates. And when we just throw it away, all the land, water, fertilizer, energy, and labor that has gone into growing it goes to waste. To make it worse, this food ends up in landfills and releases methane- a GHG 80X more potent than CO2. And this is something for which all of us are responsible.

No more composting…Mill is helping people change these food waste habits. It has built a kitchen bin that dries, shrinks, and de-stinks kitchen scraps overnight and turns them into nutrient-rich food grounds for chickens. Whatever you can’t eat- veggies, meat, dairy products, you can throw all of the in the Mill bin. It dries and grinds them at the push of a button. Here’s how it works-

• Consumers sign up for the Mill membership and receive the bin. They connect it to their WiFi and start putting in their food waste.

• The bin converts it into food grounds overnight. They are stored in the bin until it’s full.

• Once it’s full, consumers can empty these into a prepaid box and schedule a pick-up. It is then delivered back to Mill.

In the works…The team is working to get the necessary scientific and regulatory processes to turn the food grounds into a safe and nutritious chicken feed ingredient. Mill members can also track their positive impact, including the amount of food they’ve diverted from landfill.

😹 Some Good News

🌎 The ozone layer is on track to recover in the coming decades

🇫🇷 France bans single-use plastic tableware in restaurants

🇧🇷 Brazil’s president picks Amazon defender to run environment ministry

🔥How much are the world’s top economies emitting per capita?

And how quickly are they moving to renewables?

So I decided to look at what are the per capita emissions of the top economies in the world. And found this interesting graph.

Apart from the per capita emissions, this also talks about what %age of their energy comes from renewables.

I divided the chart into 4 quadrants to make it more readable and added those notes in pink/purple (I am not very good with colors 😛)

Here are some of my observations-

• Very few top economies are below the 5t mark in per capita emissions (where most of the other countries lie- denoted by gray dots).

• It’s concerning to see the ones in the upper half of the chart.

• I had no idea that Brazil was so ahead in the renewables game- turns out they are mostly using hydropower. And so is Canada

Was there something that stood out for you here?

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🔦Can I help you?

If you’re a brand that has planet Earth as a stakeholder, here are 2 ways in which I can help you-

1. Shine a spotlight on your brand in the newsletter and in a LinkedIn post (I post there every day). It’s completely FREE!

2. Help you with your long-form content strategy

I'm interested

Thanks for reading today’s edition. If you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to write to me by replying to this email.

Have a great weekend and see you next week😊