With our calculation tool, you can easily calculate your household's CO2 emissions. You can offset the emissions that you cannot (yet) avoid through our CO2 projects. Your emissions will not disappear immediately, but you will help us plant trees that will absorb this amount of CO2 in the coming years.
Nearly all of our activities cause carbon emission, for instance when driving, or when we switch on the central heating. Additionally, the production of our food or the products we buy cause significant quantities of CO2 to be poured into the air. All of this causes our climate to change.
For a liveable earth with a healthy climate it is therefore important to reduce as much CO2 as possible. Would you like to know what your impact on the climate is? Our easy-to-use calculator, developed together with sustainability foundation Milieu Centraal, helps you determine your personal CO2 footprint on an annual basis. Thus, you are able to figure out exactly how much CO2 you emit with regards to energy consumption, transportation, food and clothing… and where you could start reducing!
CO2 emission which cannot be avoided (as yet), can be compensated for in a sustainable way by planting trees in our certified forestation projects.
Answer the questions for your own situation and discover how much CO2 you emit annually. How sustainable is your lifestyle?
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The average Dutchman annually emits 9.09 tons of CO2. Compensate for this CO2 emission directly for yourself or for your entire household.
Offset nowDriving, turning on central heating or cooking dinner: almost all our (daily) activities create CO2 emissions. Much more than the earth can absorb. As a result, temperatures are rising and the climate is changing. That’s why it’s important that we drastically reduce our carbon emissions. Flying less often, driving less often, eating less meat and purchasing fewer new items: all of these behaviours help to reduce our carbon emissions.
Through Trees for All, you can offset the CO2 emissions you are not (yet) able to avoid. But our motto remains: reduce first, offset later. We view carbon offset as a tool to speed up the transition towards a climate friendly world, not as an end goal. If that were the case, you might think that, thanks to carbon offset, you could continue to emit the same amount of CO2 as you do now. And that doesn’t help the climate.
Our perspective on carbon offset
We invest your donation for carbon offset in social reforestation projects with a wide impact. The trees we plant capture carbon from the atmosphere and ensure more biodiversity and job opportunities. The farmers receive training in sustainable land use and in combining native trees with other crops; a method known as agroforestry. So it is good not just for the climate and nature, but also for the local population. One of our projects is located in Bolivia.
Read more about our project in BoliviaWe use your donation to plant more trees in our certified forest projects. By certified, we mean that the project meets the strict requirements of Plan Vivo, an international quality mark for CO2 offsetting.
Plan Vivo guarantees that the amount of CO2 you offset is actually sequestered through tree planting — and verifies this as well. Tactors such as tree species, growing location and tree age are taken into account. In addition to storing CO2 Plan Vivo-certified projects also improve biodiversity and living conditions for local communities — for example, by providing jobs and income through forest-related work.
A project doesn’t simply receive Plan Vivo certification. It is preceded by an extensive assessment. The CO2 sequestration is also monitored. This way, we ensure that your donation is well spent and contributes positively to the climate, biodiversity, and living conditions of people around the world.
After completing the calculation tool, you will see an overview of your total CO2 emissions. This helps you make choices to reduce your emissions in the future. Would you like to do something extra? Then you can offset your emissions. With your contribution, we will plant trees that will capture your emissions in the coming years.
For the carbon emissions you cause, carbon is removed from the air somewhere else, or less carbon is emitted. This compensates for your carbon emissions. So it’s like a sort of carbon bookkeeping. There are various ways to offset your carbon emissions.
Offsetting through Trees for All means that you’ve offset your carbon emissions through carbon credits. We call it certified offsetting. All our reforestation and agroforestry projects for carbon offsetting are certified. We work with Plan Vivo, an international standard for carbon offsetting that focuses on local communities, guaranteeing not only carbon sequestration, but also improved living conditions, sustainable land management and conservation of biodiversity. Various independent assessments verify that your carbon emissions are actually sequestered and that this impact is realised.
We need to drastically reduce our carbon emissions, so every contribution – whether mandatory or voluntary – is extremely important. However, offsetting shouldn’t be a goal in itself: it’s rather a means to making a transition. So the focus should be on carbon reduction.
If you offset through the right projects, it benefits the climate, nature and people. We see carbon offsetting as a good way of realising impactful projects for which there would otherwise be no funding. We plant more trees, we provide employment for the local population and give them training in sustainable land use. And this means that existing forests can be better restored and protected.
But there are also disadvantages. We might think that carbon offsetting allows us just to carry on as we are. In that case, offsetting can legitimise the idea that there’s no need for change. And that, of course, can never be the intention. So everyone has to reflect on what they can do personally to maintain a green and healthy planet.
It’s also risky to focus solely on climate compensation. Increasingly often, we see large-scale planting of monocultures, whereby the emphasis is on tree species that sequester as much carbon as possible. In our view, this is not a good development. Together, we need to focus on maintaining and restoring natural ecosystems and to take a good look at what’s necessary to achieve that. Planting the wrong type of tree in the wrong place for the wrong reason can do more harm than good.
Lots of people want to know how exactly much CO2 is offset by planting trees. However, this apparently simple question is not so easy to answer, as carbon sequestration is calculated on the basis of surface area (hectares) and growth years, and depends on many factors, such as the type of tree, the climate and the type of soil. It’s a process of many years, in which the forest develops from a crowded forest of lots of young trees to an open forest of mature, tall trees. So eventually, there are far fewer trees than the number initially planted. Furthermore, a newly planted tree stores relatively little carbon in the beginning. The amount of carbon stored increases as the tree ages, then levels off again at the end of the tree’s lifespan.Trees for All has many different projects all over the world, so it’s difficult to give an average. In the Netherlands, we work with the figures from WUR and Probos. In our projects abroad, there’s a big difference between whether you’re restoring rainforest or planting trees in very arid areas. For each project, we give an indication, and we are also planning to get a detailed calculation made for all non-certified projects.
One carbon credit is equivalent to the sequestration of 1 ton of carbon emissions. A credit can only be issued once, so can only be used once for carbon offsetting. Who has received which credits is recorded in a credit register, in order to avoid counting a credit twice.
Projects cannot automatically issue carbon credits, as they first have to meet a great many requirements. At the start of a project, project owners have to submit a detailed proposal to a certification standard. This standard then decides whether the project meets all the criteria. The expected carbon sequestration (above ground and underground in the roots) is determined, as is the impact on biodiversity and the living conditions of the local population. The actual carbon sequestration is then verified every 3 to 5 years by an external auditor. It is a robust system that sets high standards for project organisations that wish to become eligible for the issue of carbon credits.
You can ensure that carbon emissions are removed from the atmosphere by planting trees, for example, or through underground storage. Or you can ensure that the carbon emissions somewhere are reduced or avoided. For example, there are sustainable energy projects or energy-efficient cookers that need less wood for cooking. But forest protection comes into the last category as well; the reasoning being that if the forest is not felled, then carbon emissions are avoided.
Trees for All supports various forest projects worldwide. CO2 offset is only possible through our projects that are certified by Plan Vivo. This international, renowned standard guarantees that the right amount of CO2 is in fact sequestered by trees. As proof, CO2 credits are generated.
Our non-certified tree planting projects also capture and store CO2. For these projects, we can estimate the amount of CO2 storage, but you cannot use these projects to offset your CO2 emissions.
We consciously choose to support both certified and non-certified projects. We do this because we want our impact to be broad. For us, planting trees is not only about CO2 sequestration, but also about increasing biodiversity and creating healthy living conditions. Some types of projects capture more CO2 and are more suitable for certification than other projects (which are more focused on the restoration of nature, for example).
So, donating for trees or for CO2 credits are two different ways to realise the planting and management of forests. In both cases, you contribute to CO2 sequestration, more biodiversity and better living conditions for the local community. In this article we explain the difference further.
