Lyft To Make All Rides Carbon Neutral
The ride-hailing company announced on Thursday that it plans to become one of the largest voluntary purchasers of carbon offsets in the world.
According to the blog post on Medium, Lyft co-founders John Zimmer and Logan Green write, “In the future all vehicles will operate with clean energy. But climate change is not waiting. It’s happening now, and it presents a clear and immediate threat to our world and those who live in it. Action cannot wait. Today, we’re excited to announce our next action: to immediately offset the carbon emissions from all rides globally. This is an ongoing commitment, meaning that any Lyft ride from now on will be carbon neutral. Starting today, your decision to ride with Lyft will support the fight against climate change.”
As of right now, there are approximately 1.4 million cars that drive for the San Francisco-based company. And while this program doesn’t mean that Lyft will suddenly replace all these cars with electric versions, it does mean that Lyft will be directly funding emission mitigation efforts, “including the reduction of emissions in the automotive manufacturing process, renewable energy programs, forestry projects, and the capture of emissions from landfills,” as per a Medium blog post. In this way, Lyft effectively seeks to balance out the negative impact that its cars have by doing some ecological good.
The purchase of carbon credits will cost the company several million dollars a year. Those credits are expected to offset more than a million tons of carbon emissions each year. That’s equivalent to planting tens of millions of trees or taking hundreds of thousands of cars off the road. Lyft’s investment and impact will continue to grow as the company grows.
“The stark reality is that transportation is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. As a growing part of the transportation ecosystem, we are holding ourselves accountable to being part of the solution,” Zimmer and Green write. “We’re in the unique and fortunate position to be a driving force in bringing forward a more sustainable future, and we don’t take that lightly.”
So if you choose to travel with Lyft instead of driving your own vehicle, you are helping to tackle climate change. There are other ways to reduce your carbon footprint here, so that you can proudly say you are doing your bit. We all need to help to save this plant that we call home.
