EBay, PopTech Make Buying Carbon Offsets Easy

Technology conference PopTech is teaming up with eBay to launch an innovative platform that makes it easy for ordinary people to offset their carbon-dioxide emissions.

Seems like a good idea... Unlike other sites where you can offset your carbon footprint but don't know where the money is exactly going, the PopTech Carbon Initiative will allow you to decide which project your money is going towards. Currently, they offer three choices and all allegedly “allow you to make a fundamental change in someone's life in another part of the world.” Anyone with an eBay account can participate and the site will be up until the end of the year. Overall, I feel it is a cool site and a legitimate effort by eBay to contribute.

The three endorsed carbon-offsetting non-governmental organizations:

• Solar Electric Light Fund works to substitute solar power for the diesel-fueled generators that run irrigation canals in Benin.
• Instituto Ecológica, a Brazilian organization, is introducing waste biomass (such as sawdust, sugar-cane cuttings and coconut husks) as a fuel for ceramic kilns in the country's rural northeast.
• Paso Pacífico, a land-conservation fund, preserves biodiversity-rich regions of coastal Central America.