It's not easy going green when you can't help but buy the latest and greatest, power hungry tech. Jumping on an RTX 4090 graphics card purchase is going to really jostle my eco-guilt, but Razer has decided to help its customers along on their eco journey by letting them opt into carbon credits.
Razer's Restorify is "a traceable carbon neutral checkout solution," one that gives you the option to offset purchases on the Razer store with carbon credits. What that means is that, next time you buy a mouse, keyboard, or anything else you fancy on the Razer store, you could essentially pay Razer back for improving their environmental impact.
It's uncommon for consumers to get this opportunity since the metric tons that carbon credits are generally divided into are much too vast (and expensive) for the average consumer to purchase, but with Restorify you can get involved and even track the offset of your purchase.
Companies such as Amazon, Google and AT&T are all investing in carbon credits. Lenovo will currently let you purchase traceable carbon credit at the checkout when you buy a laptop.
The fear, however, is that not all carbon credits are created equal, and some companies are getting caught up in what they call 'false offsets.' There's also the concern over whether some carbon credits will ever be fulfilled, though Razer is at least doing something to quell the latter.
Phil Sturgeon, CEO and founder of the Protect Earth charity, tells me that "Carbon offsetting is viewed as 'covering for a bad thing you did' which enables business as normal, but companies are increasingly being forced to buy carbon credits to cover their entire footprint whether its good or bad." The issue there is that carbon credits can be sequestered/avoided, rather than fulfilled (retired).
Razer is selling credits that are "already retired from verified carbon registries." Meaning it's already been offset, so you know your money already went toward saving the planet. Once you've made a purchase, you can trace your offsets by typing in your order number after it's been delivered, so you can see what's been done to help the planet.
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It even tells you the exact amount of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) of carbon offsets you're offsetting in pounds. The $0.06 to offset a Sneki cushion, for example, equates to 4.9lbs CO2e of carbon offsets.
Razer's plan is to be 'net zero,' or carbon neutral, by 2030 and its many sustainability initiatives show a real push toward that goal. Razer has not only been helping eco toilet roll startups get on their feet, it's been designing a way to standardise eco-gaming product measurement with 3DMark makers, UL.
Letting us purchase carbon credits that have already been fulfilled is just another way Razer is making a change, and with plenty of other companies such as Lenovo catching on, I guess I don't have to feel as bad about leaving my PC on 24/7 any more.
