Carbon Offsetting this Book

This certificate is used to carbon offset 1,000 prints of the following picture book "I Am One Cool Cat". The carbon footprint is estimated to be 3.1[kg] per book, including its manifacturing and distribution process.

Carbon Offset is an act of balancing all or part of your necessary carbon dioxide (green house gas) emissions with emission reduction credits generated in another place.

What is the Carbon Footprint of the picture book?

The carbon footprint to manufacture and distribute this book is calculated from the retail price. CO2 emission for manufacturing is 2290[g] (5.04[lbs]), distribution 770[g] (1.70[lbs]) with a total of 3060[g] (6.74[lbs]), approximately 3.1[kg] (6.7[lbs]).
We referred to the "CO2 intensity per standard retail price unit" (CO2 Intensity from hereon) values of the year 2000 provided in the 3EID (Embodied Energy and Emission Intensity Data for Japan Using Input-Output Tables) data sets that NIES(National Institute for Environmental Studies of Japan) has provided.

The act of "buying a book" consists of two elements which are; "buying goods manufactured by the publication sector" and "buying services from the distribution sectors". The CO2 Intensity contains both aspects and is integrated into one value (which we use below), or can be decomposed into smaller units by ascending the supply chain.

CO2 emission and CO2 Intensity have the following relationship.

CO2 Intensity * Retail Price = CO2 emission

For this book the equation would be

2.04[gCO2/JPY:Retail Price] * 1500[JPY] = 3060[g]

How is the CO2 Intensity calculated?

Outlined below is a brief explanation of how the CO2 Intensity is calculated. The Input-Output table for the Japanese economy is comprised of approximately 400 sectors and is a table that shows the annual transaction amount of goods and services amongst these sectors in units of Million yen (about 10k dollars). Since information of how much fuel each sector is using is known, it is possible to calculate the amount of CO2 each sector is directly emitting.

Indirect emissions for those sectors such as emissions due to raw material manufacturing can also be calculated by tracing the supply chain and allocating each CO2 emission additionally according to their contribution ratio. This way it is possible to calculate the standard CO2 emission unit per manufactured price.

However it must be noted that this CO2 Intensity value is not just for this particular book but is the average of all kinds of books the publishing sector sells, such as pocket books, hard covers, dictionaries, magazines, expensive books, cheap books, books that claim to be environmental friendly etc. It means that if you buy a book worth 1000[JPY] (about. 10 US dollars) in Japan that is published in Japan, you create a ripple effect to emit approximately 2[kg] (4.4[lbs]) of CO2 through out various Japanese economy sectors.

It is said that the simple average CO2 Intensity for household consumption in Japan is approximately 4[kg] (8.8[lbs]) per 1000[JPY]. So it can be said that "buying a book" is one of the relatively small carbon footprint activities as a consumer.

How the offsetting is done

So now that we know the carbon footprint of this book, we need to offset the emission amount with carbon reduction credits. For all the books we have published (and those that will be published in the future) we have purchased (and will purchase) the equivalent amount of "CO2 Reduction Certificates"(This page is the certificate page) from TCO2. The amount is approximately 3.1[kg], 15.5[JPY] (as of Oct 2008 ) per book and is included in the retail price.

Contacts

For any inquiries concerning this carbon offset, please click the following button and use the contact form.

FAQ

What is a CO2 Reduction Certificate? Is it the same as Carbon Offset?

A CO2 Reduction Certificate is a Certificate that proves that you have reduced Green House Gas Emissions which cause Global Warming. Please refer to this page for details.

What is the differenct between a CO2 Reduction Certificate and a Carbon Offset Certificate ?

A CO2 REDUCTION CERTIFICATE proves that a certain amount of Emission Credits have been CANCELLED by the owner. On the other hand A CARBON OFFSET CERTIFICATE proves that a certain amount of Emission Credits have been RETIRED by the owner. Please refer to the question What is the difference between cancelling and retiring Emission Credits? for a more detailed explanation.

Emission Credits and CO2 Reduction Certificate in 3 minutes

This is for those of you who may think .. .
"A certificate that proves that you have reduced CO2? Sounds pretty fishy. Well Ive heard of Emission Trading but I dont understand the details very well."
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