Greenfleet

I just used the calculator that is on the site to work out our emissions. Between the two of us we need 87 trees to couteract the green house gasses we produce each year (house, cars and flights). Pretty nifty site. Makes you think really.

I have used renewable energy for over 8 years and at times the grid had trouble keeping up with new customers.

You can use the nifty calculator to see how many cars eqivalent you can save by just naming your power supplier and what they use.

http://www.greenpower.com.au/go/suppliers

Skinny

I have signed up and currenlty 'off set' 3 of my company vehicles. Initially I looked to see if I could convert them from petrol to LPG but wasnt feasible considering the areas that they travelled in so went for the GreenFleet offset option. We get to include their logo in our advertising and is good for our staff to see we are serious about environmental issues.
From memory we have planted over 200 trees along the Murray/Darling for the offset for our company.

Hi all,

I joined GreenFleet a few years ago as I thought it was a great idea.

Unfortunately due to lack of any of the promised newsletters, or any feed back or request for renewal, I didn't rejoin the following year.

I hope that they have improved their customer service.

I may look again as I still think that the idea is good.

Work has just signed up so get ready for a new forest taking up half of Australia . By the time they take into account hot fuel fires for training the fleet etc we'll have reforested all of QLD in area.

On principal, I'm not a huge fan of greenfleet, or any other voluntary environmental offset programs like green power. And I have noticed that a few people in the Environmental management and enviro education game share this view...

There is nothing wrong with planting trees to offset car use, although the benefits, particularly in the long term of tree planting to reduce greenhouse emissions are not really as clear cut as Greenfleet would say they are, and one would argue we should be planting trees for other reasons, not just to offset carbon emissions.

The issue is that the dedicated few should not be paying more green power or planting trees for our car use, as we then effectively subsidise the polluters, allowing them to continue to pollute while we cover the environmental cost. It should be all polluters who pay to offset their damage by planting trees, and those of us who drive more efficient cars, or are using renewable energy (Bio diesel???) should be paying less.

I think greenfleet, and greenpower set a dangerous precedent where only those who think they can afford to, will look after the environment. The other issue with greenfleet (or greenpower for that matter) is that it can create the dangerous perception that it is ok to dirve a fuel guzzeling car, or run the house AC all day long because you are part of greenfleet or have greenpower. The real problem is how much we drive our cars, and how much power we use, not how many trees we are going to plant, of where we are going to buy the power from. There are only so many trees we can plant before we runout of space (or farm land). Ultimately we need to change our behaviours, not how much we pay for our behaviours.

As for the solution, we ALL need to take steps to reduce our impact. Changing our behaviours is a priority. The dedicated few among us willing to pay more (to not change our behaviour!!), are not nearly enough to make a real difference in the long term. We should be driving less, and driving better and more efficient vehicles, and we should we lobbying our polies to create policies that target the polluters and encourage us to change our behaviours, and not rely on the greener ones among us to foot the bill…

Just my 2 cents worth…