AIGA Achieves Carbon Neutrality

This February, AIGA made its second annual offset purchase to balance the carbon consequences associated with its conferences and events. Working with Carbonfund.org, AIGA began by calculating the amount of carbon dioxide emissions related to employee and member travel to AIGA’s annual conferences. To counter this effect, AIGA is funding the planting of 400,000 beneficial fruit and nut tree seedlings in several towns in Nepal. This planting will yield at least 20,000 mature trees, offsetting 6.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide by converting CO2 for 30 years. AIGA has made a ten-year commitment to this project, which translates to approximately 200,000 mature trees. With this investment, totaling less than one half of one percent of the annual budget, AIGA’s activities are certifiably carbon neutral.

To help designers achieve carbon neutrality, AIGA is also currently developing its own carbon offset program that will allow individual members and studios to offset their carbon footprints and even individual flights. AIGA will aggregate the revenue and invest in further reforestation projects. AIGA’s carbon offset program will be available through the Center for Sustainable Design website and the AIGA online store in spring 2007.