Today, you don’t have to look far to find companies boasting about their plans to reach net zero or become carbon neutral. Amazon says it wants to reach net zero by 2040. Shell says they’ll do it by 2050, as does the airline industry. And if you listened to the recent presentation by Apple, you might be led to believe the tech giant is single-handedly going to save the planet. Countries have also jumped on the trend. For instance, the UK promises to reach net zero by 2050 despite backtracking on many of its green policies.
Going ‘net zero’ means just what it sounds like. It’s a pledge not to increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. In practice, that means reducing emissions and ‘cancelling out’ emissions by purchasing carbon offsets or utilizing a combination of both.