At Glad, we believe that cleaning up the mess we’ve made of our atmosphere is critical to addressing climate change. There are two essential steps:

1. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero as quickly as possible.

2. Removing excess, legacy greenhouse gas emissions.

We must do both.

The last time atmospheric greenhouse gases were at "safe" levels was 1988. Since then, we’ve been adding more every year.

Even if we could wave a magic wand and cut global emissions to zero tomorrow, we’d still have a vast surplus to cleanup.

Compounding the problem is the unavoidable fact that we don’t have a magic wand, and emissions won’t reach zero overnight. The problem worsens daily.

Every reduction in emissions is worth celebrating. Every reduction reduces the amount that needs to be cleaned up. But unless we reach zero, we continue adding to the mess. This is why Glad focuses on removing greenhouse gases from our atmosphere permanently - not on offsetting.

Removal is not offsetting

Read that again: removal is not offsetting.

Carbon removal has been used in some cases to offset residual emissions, but conflating the two is incorrect and discourages genuine cleanup efforts.

Offsetting, when done correctly, can be positive. Originally, it was intended as just one step in reaching net zero:

1. Measure an organisation's emissions.

2. Reduce emissions as much as possible.

3. Calculate unavoidable residual emissions.

4. Offset those emissions for a limited period by purchasing credits from others who avoid, reduce, or remove emissions - while working to reduce residual emissions in the future.

Offsets were meant as a temporary measure to incentivise faster emission cuts. Specifically, the idea is to only offset emissions from a limited timeframe, such as the past 12 months. What offsetting doesn’t do is address legacy emissions accumulated over decades.

For example, if organisation ABC emitted 100 tonnes of greenhouse gas in the past year, they offset 100 tonnes. If everyone offset their annual emissions every year, we’d achieve net zero for the year. But that wouldn’t address the vast backlog of emissions already in our atmosphere.

Offsetting sounds good in theory. There are two key issues with offsetting in practice:

1. The Peltzman Effect of offsetting

The Peltzman effect suggests that “when safety regulations or measures are introduced, people may compensate by engaging in riskier behaviour, thereby offsetting some or all of the intended safety benefits”

Emission offsetting should encourage organisations to continue reducing their annual emissions to zero by imposing a cost on residual emissions. But if offsetting is cheaper or easier than making reductions, organisations may choose to pay rather than cut emissions. Worse, because offsets are often voluntary, organisations can abandon them whenever they become inconvenient.

The result? Offsetting can enable complacency instead of accelerating emission reductions.

2. The quality of offsets

A quick search reveals multiple offsetting methods, including:

• Investing in renewable energy projects

• Purchasing carbon credits from removal activity

• Supporting reforestation and afforestation

• Investing in carbon capture and storage (CCS)

• Supporting agricultural soil carbon sequestration

• Funding methane capture projects

• Funding clean cookstove projects

• Supporting clean transportation projects

• Investing in energy efficiency projects

• Supporting community and environmental justice projects

Each method has challenges, particularly regarding:

1. Permanence - Carbon dioxide persists for centuries; offsets must match that longevity.

2. Additionality - Has the offset genuinely removed extra greenhouse gas, or would it have happened anyway?

3. Avoidance vs removal - Preventing emissions from occurring isn't the same as removing existing excess emissions.

4. Integrity - Some providers have sold the same offset multiple times.

Measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) challenges have led some to dismiss offsetting as ineffective.

Some offsetting efforts have been labelled as greenwashing, but that should not overshadow the fact that some methods, when executed properly, remain credible and beneficial in addressing emissions.

At Glad, we believe offsetting has a place - but only if it's done as originally intended. It should be a temporary solution alongside aggressive emission reduction, ensuring offsets are additional, permanent, and verifiable.

Why Glad focuses on removals

Our mission is to clean our atmosphere permanently - to restore greenhouse gas levels to as close to safe levels as possible.

Achieving this requires global emissions to drop to zero over time. AND it will require removing the excess greenhouse gas we’ve already added - and continue to add - to our atmosphere.

We do not offer offsets, nor do we encourage our members to claim their impact via our Climate Cleanup Club as such.

To be explicit: If an organisation emits 100 tonnes of emissions this year and contributes to 100 tonnes of cleanup via membership of the Glad club, they may not claim to have offset this year’s emissions.

We are not focused on what individual organisations or people emit year to year. We are focused on how much of the billions of tonnes of excess, legacy greenhouse gas has been cleaned up.

Our focus is on lasting greenhouse gas removal, ensuring that the collective action of our club members leads to real, verifiable progress toward a cleaner future for all.

We encourage emission reduction efforts, but our work is about restoring balance, not just offsetting damage.

Together, with our community, we're not offsetting - we're resetting.

Together, we’re making the planet Glad.

One more thing…

Some argue that all current efforts to address accelerated climate change should focus solely on reducing emissions. However, we don't believe that’s the best strategy. We don't believe we can afford to wait until we've hit net zero to invest the time, energy and funding into developing the multitude of ways we are going to need to cleanup the legacy mess. We believe we need to both reduce and remove in parallel in order to accelerate our designing, testing, building and scaling of the removal methods and technologies we'll need to do the job. Every day we wait, we are adding to the problem. Every day we wait our atmosphere is that little bit warmer.