At the BuilderScrap.com office we’re discussing Carbon offsetting and we’d love to hear your thoughts. Comments not just from our regular visitors using the site to trade Builders Surplus but people who believe its either a great idea so simply doesn’t work.

Carbon offsetting schemes operate in a number of areas, to compensate for travel emissions but also for emissions coming from energy use in the home. Respondents who had ever paid into a scheme or were thinking about paying in were asked what they would be willing to offset (choosing items from a pre-coded list of three options). In total 371 were asked this question. Just over half (51%) of these respondents said they would be willing to offset the electricity and/or gas that they and their household used. This was followed by 29% who said they would be willing to offset the flights they take for holidays and 26% their annual car mileage. A smaller proportion of respondents (14%) said they would not be willing to offset any of these three items while 7% indicated that they did not know. Results from this question are summarised in Table 35.

This same group of respondents were also asked whether they would be most interested in paying into projects in the UK, projects in other countries (particularly in developing countries), or whether they did not mind which. Just under half (46%) of these respondents expressed a preference for paying into a UK-based project, with 15% expressing a preference for paying into projects in other countries. Slightly fewer than a third (29%) indicated that they did not mind which type of scheme.