NPR had a bit this morning on carbon offsets. IMHO these are a pretty poor way to address the problem of carbon output. Most of these credits go towards things like wind and solar power and often claim to help you be “carbon neutral”. These may reduce growth of carbon output, but they don’t actually help remove any of the carbon you spewed in the activity you took part in (and for which you are buying credits). Its mainly a guilt alleviator, and really just serves to enable people to not improve or better their behavior or lifestyle.

Think of it this way, would you support a murder offset credit, that let you kill someone, but then donate money to help starving children somewhere (who otherwise would die). In the end you may be “life neutral”, but you still did bad thing, and you can’t right it by paying someone to make you feel better. Extreme comparison for sure, but I think it is apt.

I’m hearing more and more about people buying plastic cutlery based on corn and or potato starches.

The thinking is “Hey, these are plant based, and biodegrade”.  The problems?:

• It takes an awful lot of petro to grow, process the crops, the manufacture this stuff (maybe as much as just making them from oil directly).
• Most of these are just tossed in the regular trash, where they end up in a landfill, sealed up by more layers on top.  No Oxygen = No biodegredation.  If you are going to toss these, the best place would be with your yard waste if you have that picked up by the city.

There are actually several ratings for these kinds of plastics:

• Degradable
  • Biodegradable
    • Compostable

This is just one small example of how people are quick to think there is a way to get something for nothing in the eco sense.  There is no such thing as “good disposable”.