How you can offset your carbon emissions in just five simple steps

Our SEO experts, ‘carbon emission offset’ is a term that scores pretty big hits on Google. They’ve advised us to do something. Since our Pongamia trees do well in carbon compensation, it seemed like a small effort to dedicate a blog to it. Therefore, especially for you, dear reader: Corekees’ roadmap to becoming carbon-neutral!

1. Make an Inventory of your emissions
To measure is to know, and that’s why it’s essential to start with mapping your emissions. Yes, we could have developed a tool for that, but we prefer to plant trees. Besides, plenty of websites that can help you calculate your CO2 emissions. We think the one at Milieucentraal is very good! If you don’t feel like doing the math or don’t have time to do it, you can just use the Dutch average as a starting point: That’s an emission of 9000 kilograms of CO2 per person per year.

2. Calculate how many trees to plant
Pongamia trees are known for their sizeable CO2 absorption. On average, 1 Pongamia tree offsets 44 kilograms of CO2 per year! An adult oak tree only offsets 22 kilograms of CO2 per year. When we assume the Dutch average of 9000 kg CO2 per person, you will need to plant 9000/44 = 205 Pongamia trees to become CO2 -neutral.

3. Decide how many trees you will plant per month
We will not beat around the bush: the number of trees you plant will probably be determined by your income, savings and risk appetite. Because we like to keep it simple, you get to decide how much you grow. On average Corekees investors plant three trees per month, but investing is possible from as little as one tree per month!

4. Calculate after how many years you will be carbon neutral
Three trees per month, of course, equates to 36 trees per year. To know how many years it will take until you are CO2 -neutral, you should do the following: take the number of trees from paragraph 2 and divide it by the number of trees you will plant per year. In our example, that’s 205/36 = 5.5 years until you are CO2 -neutral.

5. In the meantime, do something else and wait for your return
Did we mention that our trees also provide financial returns in addition to carbon offsets? Yep, it’s true: an average of 7.5% to 8.5% per year over twenty years. We’ll explain exactly how that works here, but it comes down to this: the nuts from the trees are harvested and sold every year, and you get a share of the proceeds. Incidentally, you will not receive that return immediately because trees naturally need time to grow, but three to four years after you have purchased the first trees, you will receive the first return from us! What can you do in the meantime? Hmm, well, perhaps you could use that time to reduce your CO2 emissions a little…