Environmental sustainability sells This year's fashionable Christmas present is a tree-planting certificate, according to Future Forests, an environmental pressure group. ‘Buy a living and breathing gift that helps protect the climate,' it urges. Planting trees to help mitigate climate change has never been more popular. Book a skiing holiday, hire a car or take out a mortgage and you may be offered the chance to plant trees to offset your carbon emissions. In Italy the public is being urged, in ‘12 days for the planet' advertising campaign, to go ‘carbon neutral' by offsetting its greenhouse emissions. Companies are also taking the plunge. Tetra Pak UK, the packaging company, has just announced in 2003 its intention to go carbon-neutral by the end of that year, partly by investing in tree-planting in Uganda. Swiss Re, the reinsurer, also announced in 2003 that it would ‘act on what we preach' by going carbon-neutral over the next 10 years. As well as cutting emissions by 15% by improving energy efficiency and reducing flights, it will invest $2.5m (£1.4m) in offset projects through the World Bank Community Development carbon fund. The World Bank reported in December 2003 that there had been rapid growth in demand for carbon credits ‘with consumer appeal' for individuals, companies and events wanting to offset emissions. Community-based agro-forestry and other forestry deals are providing particularly attractive, with the market roughly tripled over recent years to about 500,000 tones of carbon dioxide in 2003, it said. Prices range from £55 to £512 a tone. But not everyone is enthused by the idea. ‘The concept of carbon neutrality is intellectually flawed,' says Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, which helps UK businesses to cut emissions. Critics argue that carbon offsets distract attention from reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Large-scale tree planting is especially controversial. But advocates of carbon offset schemes say they encourage greater efforts to reduce emissions. Tetra Pak UK thinks it can cut its energy use per unit of production by 24% before 2005. ‘The savings we can make by saving energy and improving environmental performance will offset the cost of the offsets,' says Richard Hands, environment manager. Most charities that organize carbon offsets schemes are aware of the controversy over using trees to soak up carbon dioxide. Half of Future Forests' projects are, in spite of its name, renewable energy schemes. In practice, environmental purists prefer to invest in renewable energy projects, it says. But tree planting helps get the message about carbon neutrality to a mass audience. Some offset schemes go even further to satisfy the concerns of environmentalists. The US-based Climate Neutral Network insists that a large proportion of any company's efforts is devoted to reducing the carbon dioxide emissions of the US, the world's largest emitter. ‘Pollution prevention has to begin at home,' says Sue Hall, its executive director. For example, Shaklee, a health products company, believes that in 2000 it became the world's first climate-neutral company, when it replaced the boilers in local schools in Portland, Oregon. This reduced emissions and cut the schools' energy bill by $250,000 - giving Shaklee the basis for a powerful marketing campaign. Companies should always look for ‘compelling business strategies' when they consider going carbon-neutral, says Ms Hall. For example, when BP, the oil company, used carbon offsets to launch a brand of ‘climate cool fuel', it boosted its business five-fold with Interface, the carbon tile company. In the US, as in Europe, enthusiasm for climate-neutrality is gaining momentum, says Ms Hall. ‘It is an idea whose time has come - and not a minute too soon.'

Question

1 Why are firms so keen to demonstrate their commitment to environmental sustainability?

2 How do environmentalists view the debate on ‘carbon neutrality'?