How to Gift Carbon Offsets

Carbon offsets are a great gift for those people who don’t want more stuff for the holidays. You can send them an email with a certificate of offset that looks like this:

Also if you want them to know more about where the offsets came from you can send them an invoice that looks like this:

Carbon offsets are easy to buy from https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/ but it is really tricky to give them as a gift due to poor web design. Here is how you can do it:

1. First go to the projects page at https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/AllProjects and choose a project to buy carbon offsets from. You might want to choose the cheapest or you might want to choose one that is for an especially good cause.
2. Once you have chosen a project, select how many tons of CO2 you want to purchase as a gift. You might want to calculate how much CO2 the person who you are gifting to has consumed and offset that much CO2.
   
3. Click “View cart” and you will be presented with a page that looks like this:
   
   The box that says “Please state your reason for offsetting” is important because it will show up as the text under the “Reason for Cancellation” section of the Voluntary Cancellation Certificate. The standard options are reasonable, or you can choose the “Other” option and enter your own completely custom text.
4. Click “PROCEED TO CHECKOUT” and you will be presented with this page to enter the billing address:
   
   This part of the process is very poorly designed. Put the first name and last name of the person you are giving the gift to in the first name and last name of the billing address (don’t worry, the information on this page is not used for payment). Then put your email, country, state, city, address and postal code in the rest of the boxes. By doing this, the certificate will have the name of the person you are giving the gift to in the “Presented to” section, but you will receive the email with the certificate so you can forward it to the person you are giving the gift and include a nice message.
5. Continue with the checkout process and purchase the offsets using Paypal, enter your correct billing information in the Paypal checkout.
6. When the payment is completed you will get an email containing the Voluntary Cancellation Certificate and the invoice. You can then forward that email with a nice note or download the certificate and compose a new email with the certificate as an attachment.

You have successfully given carbon offsets as a gift! You might want to explain to the person who you are giving the gift to that these offsets do not really eliminate their emissions. Carbon offsets are closer to an investment in sustainable technology that is proportional to their emissions. They are still a great gift though because they can start conversations about sustainable living and personal environmental responsiblity!