It was a matter of time before companies started to offer on a massive scale to their customers the option to offset the carbon emissions of their purchases. Currently, the voluntary carbon offset market allows every company around the world to become carbon neutral by financing renewable energy projects or carbon sequestration projects globally.
A growing number of apps are launching in the past couple of years to help customers make their shopping green. Most of them automatically calculate the shipping of online orders and offer to make it carbon neutral with a click of a button.
EcoCart is a tool that estimates the carbon footprint when people shop online from participating stores. The app allows customers to agree to offset carbon footprint of the shipping of their orders for free. Then, the company finances sustainable projects like planting 1,000,000 trees by 2021.
The startup has calculated that every day in the US alone, ecommerce packages travel the same distance as going to the moon and back 133 000 times. Therefore, online shopping is a huge contributor to climate change and customers are in an urgent need to be provided carbon offset as a service.
More Carbon Neutral Shopping Apps Coming
Startups like EcoCart are a part of a new movement among early-stage companies to launch services for businesses and consumers that offer ways to become aware and reduce their environmental footprint.
Another startup called Shop provided by Shopify also allows for a greener shopping experience via its app Shop Pay. It offsets 100% of the delivery emissions produced by every order at no cost for the customer or the brand they shop from.
Since its beta launch in April, the app managed to save more than 10,000 tons of carbon emissions from customers’ shopping by protecting the equivalent of 11 million trees in the Peruvian rainforest.
“By using Shop and checking out with Shop Pay, you can feel good about supporting the brands you love and reducing negative impacts to the environment,” said Carl Rivera, General Manager of Shop.
GreenSwapp is among the apps offering carbon neutral shopping for groceries. The app tracks the carbon footprint of groceries carts, suggests lower-carbon alternatives and allows customers to buy carbon offsets for the remaining emissions of their groceries shopping.
Carbon neutral services providers are a fast-growing niche that helps people finally know their carbon footprint and climate-friendly choices for their purchases. Involving online shoppers in carbon offsetting projects for reducing emissions is a clever way for everyone to contribute to the net zero economy.
