Offset Carbon By Shopping Online at TheOffSetShop?
6 Comments October 9, 2007 / Posted in ShoppingGoing green and offsetting carbon is something you may have thought about – a number of companies will do this for you, or for example like IBuyeco you can pay extra for the priviledge. The Offset Shop is another shopping site that wants to help you offset your carbon – but is it any good?
According to the site’s blurb “TheOffsetShop.co.uk pledge to purchase 1kg of Carbon Offset for every £5 spent as a direct result of visiting any store from our website”. Basically if you shop through their shopping facility, they earn on sales, and will then use some of their commissions to be spent on carbon offsetting. It’s a nice sentiment, but Sadly Fight Climate Change is unimpressed!
Firstly, it’s just a standard shopping site with nothing special to write about. For example there’s no indication of products that are specially eco-friendly, low carbon or provided by a store that is undertaking environmental steps to improve their business. For example Currys could be highlighted as they offer consumers the option to recycle their appliances versus another electrical store that didn’t. Shops like Even Greener and Natural Collection are not even mentioned!
Another issue with TheOffSetShop is there’s no way to track your own offset. This site could be so much better if you could see what you’ve bought, how much was generated for the site and then how much was offered in terms of offsetting. The good news is that there is some indication of how much carbon has been bought by the site as a result of sales through this service (3600kgs Carbon Offset Purchased) but surely this should be a bigger feature of the site? How much was bought last month? The month before? If visitors could register, see there own contribution vs that of the whole userbase then that could well encourage others to take part in this venture.
However, there’s a more serious issue to consider before you race off and shop through this site!
The 3600kgs is offset from £18,000 worth of sales (based on 1kg for every £5 spent). The cost of the 3.6tonnes is just £27 (from their own certificate). That represents barely 0.2% of the total amount spent on the site! Even if we assume the site is generating just 1% profit from these sales – £27 paid to CO2 offsetting vs £153 profit is perhaps a little on the low side!
Addendum: After speaking to TheOffSetShop (and correcting some rather dodgy maths) it’s obvious that they are trying to provide a service to allow people to help offset CO2 emissions. Hopefully in time, and as they become more successful, they’ll be able to donate more of the income from consumers to the cause.
Jason
Thank you very much for your review and you do raise some valid points.
Please remember the important point throughout this though – The CO2 offset does not cost anyone any extra whatsoever.
I’ll try my best to address your concerns:
First of all it’s early days yet and we have had to take a ‘best guess’ at the kinds of figures that would be viable. As we know there are a huge range of percentages in the commissions we receive, generally ranging from 0% -20%. The site is based on the AW Shopwindow software and so if someone chooses to purchase a 0% commission item (e.g. batteries and cables from Dixons), we will still honour our pledge – i.e. the purchase actually costs us money! Thankfully, these are few and far between.
We have tried to take general everyday figures to come to some sort of starting values. From my experience I have found that when people have a wide choice, the larger stores tend to fare better than most and, as such, we have to be very conscious to account for those type of commissions.
e.g. LCD TV from a High Street Store
Cost: £1000
Commission paid on (after VAT removed): £825
Commission: 2%
Total Received: £16.50
Tax to be paid by us: approx £3.60
CO2 pledged: 200kg
Cost to us: £1.50
Net Profit: £15.00
Overall figure results in approx. 10% of our profit paying for Carbon Offsetting.
But what if the store only pays 0.5% commission?
Net profit is Just £1.90 – How much did it cost me to get the buyer there in the first place?
Anyway, this is done at no cost to the buyer whatsoever, and we have hopefully found them the best price anyway!
This is just an everyday example. There are plenty of purchases which would cost us more & less.
Of course – I’m sure I now don’t also need to go into the cost of developing, running, promoting & maintaining a worthwhile site. We all know that can cost a fortune and quickly suck up any profits!
I’d like to move onto Car Insurance.
We are hoping to make this a real issue which we are truly passionate about.
Without a full-on insurance search & database we cannot make every specific car carbon neutral. However, what we can do is take the official figure for the amount of carbon polution the average UK car produces and offset that. Overall this should average out and each driver can then be confident that they are embracing carbon neutral motoring.
So what do we make from a car insurance policy (for those of you in this field get ready to cringe!)?
We have pledged to reduce CO2 emissions by 2900kgs for EVERY policy taken out.
This therefore costs us £21.75 for every policy taken out!
Bearing in mind that some commissions don’t even pay us that much, even before the tax man, then you may get an idea of where the ‘profits’ from elsewhere go.
Sure other companies do pay more – but until we start getting firm figures then we have to ensure we have enough money avaialble, when everything is taken into account, to honour all our pledges.
Just before I finish Car Insurance – most of us have probably seen the ads by ibuyeco. Now, I have to be careful here because I really applaud what they are doing, but they allow drivers to become Carbon Neutral motorists for an additional fee (my quote was an extra £23). It would appear to me that many people have missed the true scale of what we are trying to do here. TheOffsetShop can make EVERY car Carbon Neutral. AT NO EXTRA COST. Think about the implications there? Hence our comment, “We Challange Others To Follow”.
Moving onto another of your (excellent) points:
Proof of purchase – This is kind of embarrassing really, we knew it would be essential to show we were doing what we promised and would love to make a great feature of this. The fact is we haven’t yet sold enough to to generate 3600kgs of offset, so we bought this ourselves as a kind of ‘credit’. As the site grows in profile and sales we hope to make much more of this and, yes, again, up our commitment to a higher amount of CO2 offset.
As far as ‘green goods’ and promotions – this is an area of (minor) contention between myself and Anne. I feel that there are plenty of very good specialist sites out there catering to the desires of the ‘green purchaser’. What I am hoping to do is raise the issue without being thought of as a ‘tree hugging’ site. If you’re looking for a new TV you don’t want recycled tyres being sold to you!
Tracking of individual offsets – this is a tricky one. Although we may be ’savvy’ in using a computer, signing up to sites etc, there are a great deal of people who would run a mile and this would only put them off. As the tracking would also be more complex for us we decided not to run with it. I must say that there are a couple of other sites that offer carbon offsets and they have a personal tracking feature. I am quite happy then, that for those that desire this, it is available.
We make no excuse for trying to operate a viable business, but we are genuine, ethical and honour our pledges. As time goes by we hope to raise the amount of CO2 we can offset as much as possible.
How green are eBay, Kelkoo, Nextag, Amazon etc? And before anyone points it out, we are currently applying to make our entire operation Carbon Neutral. Our official confirmation should appear on the site soon.
I hope that has gone some way to answering your questions but I am more than happy to answer all questions either in the forum or by PM.
Thanks for reading this far!
Finally, I know some people have their doubts about Carbon Offsetting. If this isn’t for you then please don’t think we’re trying to convert anyone. We just felt that no-one was addressing the issue for those who wish to do something. I’m sure the Forum in general doesn’t wish this discussion to go down that route, not here anyway.
Kind Regards
David Slater
Owner http://www.TheOffsetShop.co.uk
Quick note:
In direct response to the comments here we have introduced a Personal Certificate for CO2 Offset on Car Insurance.
Addition to our Car Insurance Page:
“If you would like your personal certificate for Carbon Neutral Car Insurance then please just contact us with your name, the insurer’s name and the date & time you took out the policy. We will then buy the carbon offset in your name and forward the certificate on to you.”
At present we do not wish to make the site more complex by introducing a registration process but we hope this will help in such an important area.
Kind Regards
David Slater
Owner http://www.TheOffsetShop.co.uk
Good News!
After one full month of trading we have been able to assess our figures and are very pleased to be able to announce the following:
As of 17 Oct 2007 The OffsetShop.co.uk’s carbon offset pledge will be increasing from 1kg for every £5 spent to 1kg for every £2 spent!
We hope that this huge increase is the first of many and we would like to thank all of our visitors who have made this possible.
As far as we are aware this easily out performs any other site offering carbon offsets on purchases. We hope to keep it this way.
Many Thanks
Dave Slater
Owner http://www.TheOffsetShop.co.uk
Hi Guys, I have just come across another online comparison website, Compare2offset.com, which offsets your carbon footprint for free when you shop online via these guys.
Unlink theoffsetshop, Compare2offset.com tracks your carbon footprint and displays all your purchases in your account along with how much of your carbon footprint they have offset. They also display the amount of carbon they will offset next to each specific item.
I tend to buy offsets when I fly. Next time I fly I might as well buy something from through them and they will offset my flight for free and I get something I want in return!
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