Being a human in the 21st century means releasing environmentally harmful emissions into the air simply through your everyday activities. This happens when you shower, yawn, or charge your phone. Even if you try to live an environmentally conscious lifestyle, it can feel discouraging to think that your efforts are not helping the planet in a significant way. Human-created carbon dioxide emissions are propelling climate change, which is a defining issue of our time that we must combat. Climate change has already wreaked havoc on the Earth, so it’s critical that we all take whatever steps we can to better the situation we have all contributed to.

There is Always a Way to Help

While people have heavily contributed to the effects of climate change, fixing this problem is not a lost cause. It may seem overwhelming and insurmountable; after all how can our individual actions reverse over 100 years of contributing to climate change? We stopped asking for straws, and bring our own bags into the grocery store, but how can we consistently effect change in more aspects of daily life? Helping to stop climate change does not mean you have to fit all your trash for a year in a single jar. In fact, there are easy and practical ways to reduce your carbon footprint, reverse the environmental damage already done, and proactively fight climate change, and it all starts with changing how we shop online with carbon offsetting.

Carbon Offsetting

One way to live a practical, but still sustainable, lifestyle adjustment is through carbon offsetting. In short, carbon offsetting allows us to pay for our carbon emissions produced from everyday activities like driving, eating meat, and using plastic. Carbon offsetting neutralizes the emissions we produce by providing a way to fund a greenhouse gas emission reduction project. These projects seek to actively reduce the amount of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere. The funds provided to these projects will offset the unavoidable environmental damage that living life causes.

The cost of an offset is usually determined by measuring the amount of carbon emitted by a certain activity and then comparing this measurement against the amount of carbon removed by the project being funded. The amount of carbon the company or individual needs to pay to “cancel out” the emissions equates to a dollar value. The price of an offset can vary depending on the cost of the project being funded. For example, planting trees in a deforested part of Massachusetts is much cheaper than building a wind farm in Southern California. Thus, the cost of the offset would be less expensive regardless of the amount of carbon emitted by your activity.

The Beauty of the Carbon Credits

Millions of people around the world worry about climate change and are unsure of how to help fix the problem. Buying carbon credits is a way to take real and verifiable action. Purchasing one carbon credit guarantees you the ability to offset carbon-dioxide emissions by one ton. For example, if you buy a product and use a carbon credit, then the money spent on that credit goes back to projects like building wind power turbines or forestation initiatives. Large companies like JetBlue have been purchasing carbon credits since 2008 and now have offset roughly 800,000 metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions. The cost of a carbon credit can range from $5 to $11 per metric ton, so clearing the air in your environment does not mean you have to clear out your wallet as well.

Carbon Credits Made Easy

Now that we have established that carbon offsetting is the simplest and easiest way to help your environment without making drastic lifestyle changes, you might be wondering where you can buy carbon credits and start reducing your carbon footprint.

EcoCart provides customers with the ability to do exactly that—purchase carbon credits and make their e-commerce orders carbon neutral. EcoCart is a Shopify plugin available on the Shopify app store. Online businesses can easily integrate EcoCart through their Shopify accounts. When a customer makes an order, all they have to do is simply check a box, and offset the environmental impact of their order.

EcoCart empowers businesses and consumers to fight climate change one e-commerce order at a time. When you order an item online, EcoCart serves as an easily accessible way to offset the carbon emissions released from producing and shipping the item you ordered, thus making your order carbon neutral.

EcoCart hopes for a 100% carbon neutral future where sustainability is a no-brainer. By using a Shopify plugin, EcoCart is available to everyone making e-commerce orders through a Shopify store. On top of that, EcoCart makes sure that check-out time is still extremely efficient. In fact, it takes very little extra time to confirm with EcoCart that your order will be carbon neutral. After making this decision and applying your carbon credits, you can live with the satisfaction of knowing that you are proactively trying to make the Earth a healthier and more sustainable place.

Get started and install EcoCart on your Shopify store today.