A T-shirt with a tonne of carbon locked up in it? That must be a pretty big T-shirt right? Not exactly. This new range of T-shirts has been created by Treecreds. Their objective is to save forests from being logged and encourages investment in avoided deforestation offset projects. The T-shirts each contain one tonne of carbon-dioxide equivalent emissions. That is, for every T-shirt purchased, Treecreds retires one carbon credit.
Treecreds assists organisations in calculating, reducing, marketing and offsetting their emissions. Treecreds wants to raise their profile through these T-shirt. In addition to T-shirts, badges have also been created. The badges contain an embedded offset component of 0.2 tonne of carbon.
A bit of background. Treecreds was founded in 2008 and works predominantly in the facilitation of sustainable events ranging from music festivals and performances to corporate meetings. Treecreds also assists with the marketing of sustainable business practices. It does this through a range of innovative measures including carbon neutral tickets and events and the creation of eco-art installations.
Treecreds avoided deforestation offsets are different to forestry offsets which are derived from treeplanting. Avoided deforestation provides an alternative income to clearing and logging and preserves forests that would be destroyed without this mechanism. Avoided deforestation supports living ecosystems, habitat and communities as well as the embodied carbon of the trees. Credits are currently sourced from the ‘Minding the Carbon Store’ project. This project saved 12,000 hectares of forest and woodland in Queensland from clearing for the next 120 years. Treecreds also supports other project groups in Tasmania, Indonesia and Cambodia and more offsets will be available later in 2010.
For more information on Treecreds, or to get yourself a T-shirt or badge visit http://www.treecreds.com/.
