Usually at the BuilderScrap.com offices we’re discussing Free Building Materials and how to get rid of Builders Surplus Supply. We’d like our readers to know we’ve a vested interest in Carbon offsetting and various other environmental projects.

This post from the current defra survey looks at respondents’ attitudes towards carbon offsetting and the types of offsetting schemes that are available. As part of the omnibus survey, the respondents who said they knew a lot or a fair amount about carbon offsetting were presented with three statements about offsetting and asked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with each (on a scale ranging between strongly agree and strongly disagree). Figure 1 summarises responses to these statements and compares these with the findings from the 2007 Defra survey.

Respondents who reported having already used offsetting and who knew a fair amount or a lot about carbon offsetting were presented with one additional statement (‘by making people more aware of how their behaviour affects the environment, carbon offsetting encourages more environmentally-friendly behaviour in other areas of their life’). As so few respondents answered this question, the results for this statement are provided for indicative purposes only – the base size is too low to support meaningful interpretation.

Due to the relatively small base sizes for each of the statements, most of the apparent differences shown in Figure 14 are not statistically significant. However, people‟s attitudes towards carbon offsetting do seem to have become slightly more positive since the 2007 Defra survey. The main significant changes since 2007 are highlighted below.

Compared with 2007, respondents who knew a lot or a fair amount about carbon offsetting, were more likely to agree that ‘I would trust companies offering carbon offsetting to use the money I paid in the right way’ (35% agreed compared with 24% in 2007) and more likely to disagree that ‘carbon offsetting will make no difference to the fight against climate change’ (50% compared with 42% in 2007). Respondents were less likely to agree that ‘carbon offsetting encourages people to carry on doing things that harm the environment’ (44% agreed compared with 57% in 2007). All of these changes indicate that respondents were more positive towards carbon offsetting compared with 2007.

More from BuilderScrap.com on Carbon Offsetting. The survey also looked at the factors which might prompt people to start or stop paying into carbon offsetting schemes.

Those who had paid into a carbon offsetting scheme (169 respondents in total) were asked to state the main reason for choosing to offset their emissions. Respondents were presented with a list of five options but also given the chance to select an “other” code and provide their own verbatim response. The reason given most frequently for paying into a carbon offsetting scheme was because “it helps the environment” (41%). A smaller number of respondents reported that it was because “it is the right thing to do / we have a duty to do it” (11%) or that “it is an easy thing to do” (11%). Smaller proportions said they had paid in because “it makes me feel less guilty about my lifestyle” (9%) or because “it adds little to my travel and/or household bills” (4%).

Those who had not yet paid into a carbon offsetting scheme were asked what the main reason was for this. Again, respondents who answered this question were given a list of pre-coded answers to choose from. Responses were more evenly divided between “I can’t afford it / it’s too expensive” (14%), “it is not important to me” (13%), because “I don’t think it would make a difference‟ (12%), or because “I don’t know enough about it / need more information‟ (10%). A smaller proportion of respondents reported that they had not paid into a scheme because they “don’t trust companies offering carbon offsetting to use the money I paid in the right way” (4%) or because they had “never thought about it” (4%).

If “knowing that you were buying Government approved offsets would make you more or less likely to offset?‟. One quarter (25%) of respondents said they would be more likely to offset if they knew the scheme was Government approved with around one in ten (12%) saying they would be less likely. However, around one half (49%) said that knowing this would make no difference. Table 36 summarises the responses to this question.

At BuilderScrap.com we’d like to know how many Builders would use the government approved schemes to carbon offset when disposing of their Builders Supply!

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.

At BuilderScrap.com we like to think we know about carbon offsetting. All respondents in the omnibus survey were asked how much they knew about carbon offsetting. Figure 13 summarises responses to this question compared with data from the 2007 Defra survey.

Respondents’ perceptions of how much they knew about carbon offsetting have decreased since 2007. In the current survey a little over a third (37%) of respondents said they knew at least a little about carbon offsetting’ down from 43% in 2007. The proportion of people saying they knew nothing and had never heard of the term had increased from 35% in 2007 to 40% in 2009. Respondents who said they knew at least a little about carbon offsetting were asked whether they had ever paid into a scheme personally. This question was followed up using a stages of change response scale to assess the extent to which respondents had considered paying into such a scheme. The results for both questions are presented in Table 34.

Of those who knew at least a little about carbon offsetting, 6% said they had paid into a scheme at some point in the past (the equivalent of 2% of all respondents). This represents a statistically significant increase from 3% in 2007.

The second question presented in Table 34 was asked after providing all respondents with a description of what carbon offsetting was, to help assess willingness to act. This suggests a slightly different picture, with 14% of those who knew at least a little about carbon offsetting saying that they were at the maintenance stage of carbon offsetting (having either ‘done this before and intending to do it again’ or ‘done this before though not as much as I’d like’). This may reflect a difference in what is understood by ‘paying into’ a carbon offsetting scheme rather than ‘using’ a carbon offsetting scheme. One third of respondents (33%) were at the pre-contemplative stage (having either never heard of it or thought about it), while around one quarter (27%) had thought about it but rejected it and 17% were contemplating it but had not yet used a scheme. Only 2% of respondents who knew at least a little about offsetting had used a scheme previously but stopped.