Greenfleet - Carbon Offset Watch

17 September 2008

Why Greenfleet did not participate in Carbon Offset Watch

You may have heard about a new website called Carbon Offset Watch in the past few days.

Well over half of the organisations invited to respond to the survey behind this website declined to participate (30 out of 54) and Greenfleet was one of them.

One of the main reasons behind our decision was that the organisation conducting the survey, the Total Environment Centre, has been very active in presenting what we consider ill-informed opinion, as opposed to facts, about forestry offsets and we were not convinced that they would present an unbiased picture.

Another reason is that the ranking system does not take into account the many co-benefits of a forestry approach, nor value Australian abatement action favourably against action taken overseas.

This meant it would be impossible for an approach like ours to get a good score and you will note that any forestry offset providers that did participate are at the bottom of the listing. You can see from the website that a large number of other credible forestry organisations also chose not to participate.

We agree wholeheartedly that there should be a lot more stringency and legislated standards for the industry and that is why we have pursued approval for our methodologies under the Greenhouse Friendly™ initiative (the Australian Government accreditation scheme), why we have our plantings independently verified as part of that approval, and why we co-operate with other credible and unbiased surveys such as the one administered by RMIT / EPA Victoria for the Carbon Offset Guide which can be found at www.carbonoffsetguide.com.au

Why Greenfleet did not participate in Carbon Offset Watch (417KB)