Atlanta Neighborhood Certified as Country’s First Carbon Neutral Zone

[Image Credit: jesse4948 on Flickr, under a Creative Commons license]

This past Friday was an exciting day here in Atlanta! The historic Corner-Virginia Highland area announced its certification as a Carbon Neutral Zone. Teaming up with Verus Carbon Neutral, the businesses in this area completely offset their carbon emissions to create the U.S.’s first Carbon Neutral Zone. So what does that really mean?

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Verus Carbon Neutral
Verus, a new local company, performs an audit to determine a business’, or in this case an area’s, carbon footprint. They then help their clients purchase offsets via The Chicago Climate Exchage to offset that footprint. The offsets they recommend are anything from renewable energy, such as wind farms, biomass energy, or hydroelectric dams to energy efficiency projects, the destruction of industrial pollutants or agricultural byproducts, destruction of landfill methane, or reforestation.

Businesses in the Corner-Virginia Highland voluntarily pitched in to purchase the offsets they needed for carbon neutrality. Verus is getting their offsets from Valley Wood Inc., a sustainable forestry manager in Georgia. They’re planning to donate any profits from these offsets to the Humane Society and other charities.

Is It Green?
This is not really a black and white (green and white?) area. It would be wonderful if, in addition to coordinating carbon offsets, these businesses talked a bit more about steps they’re taking to reduce their carbon footprints directly. Offsets are a great start, but what are the businesses themselves doing?

It sounds like shops in the area were working to be more Earth friendly even before partnering with Verus. Antje Kingma, founder of Eco-Bella, said “Many of us have taken steps to run environmentally friendly companies for years[...]this zone gave us all a chance to come together for our community.” There is no question that Eco Bella is a green business. They carry Earth-friendly products and work hard to lower the impact of their business.

Overall, this is certainly a positive thing. These businesses are taking responsibility for their environmental impact and setting the stage for other areas to do the same. What do you think?

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