Toronto, ON– Unless you deliver your Christmas presents by reindeer-drawn sleigh, your gift-giving this holiday season will contribute to global warming. Roots Canada has got into the holiday spirit by teaming up with Zerofootprint, a not-for-profit organization that helps businesses become sustainable by increasing efficiency and offsetting environmental costs. Zerofootprint will offset the CO2 emissions of all Roots.com deliveries.

“Zerofootprinting” gift deliveries make an already environmentally friendly way of shopping totally carbon-neutral. If all shopping were done online, more than half of the traffic on the roads would be eliminated, as would the energy requirements of retail stores. Taking this into account, online shopping is the clear environmental choice, as it contributes a fraction of the climate-changing CO2.

But delivery trucks still burn fossil fuel. Zerofootprint makes Roots.com gifts gift carbon-neutral by “offsetting” the emissions of those trucks. It is a fairly straightforward calculation to determine just how much CO2 the vehicles spew out. Once Roots and Zerofootprint know how many tonnes have been emitted, they can arrange for an equal number to be offset.

The many strategies for offsetting carbon fall into two categories—cleaning up CO2 that has already been emitted, and preventing future emissions. Examples of the latter include investments in renewable energy, in efficiency measures, and clean technology for industry. If organizations that are moving towards a greener future in these ways can quantify and verify the carbon savings of their projects, they can sell credits. A credit is a tonne of unemitted carbon. When someone buys one of these credits, they are investing in a cleaner future.

But the only way to clean up the CO2 that is already heating up the atmosphere and dashing hopes of a white Christmas, is to soak it up with trees. Trees “breathe” CO2, and turn it into oxygen. The problem is that only about 20% of the Earth’s original forests are still standing, so the planet is finding it hard to catch its breath. Meanwhile, we’re cutting down what remains at an alarming rate. Deforestation accounts for about 25% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Clearly we need trees for more than putting presents under, and we need them soon. So Zerofootprint is investing on Roots’ behalf in forestation projects that will soak up the same amount of carbon as the delivery trucks emit. And everyone, not just Roots customers, will be able to breathe a little easier.

“We don’t use elves or magic,” says Deborah Kaplan, Executive Director of Zerofootprint. “But we can help Roots out with the holiday spirit. And we should keep in mind that the effects of global warming are amplified at the poles. Since we’ll all be thinking of the North Pole this season, let’s do what we can to make sure it’s still there in a few years.”

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About Roots

Established in 1973 as a natural footwear company, Roots is today Canada’s leading lifestyle brand, known around the world for its wide range of quality leather goods, clothing, and accessories. Starting as a tiny store in Toronto selling the Roots Negative Heel Shoe, Roots now has more than 125 stores in Canada and the United States, along with 20 locations in Asia. In addition, Roots has a state-of-the art leather goods factory and design centre in Toronto.

About Zerofootprint

Zerofootprint provides information, products, and services to the global network of consumers and businesses that wish to reduce their environmental impact. Our organization focuses on three areas: Zerfootprint.Net , a content hub for the green community; Zerfootprint Energy , which specializes in making renewable energy systems financially accessible to builders and homeowners; and Zerofootprint Offsets , a program that helps companies, publications, and events mitigate their environmental impacts through natural resource restoration and carbon offsetting.

For more information, or to book an interview with Zerofootprint, please contact Talia Klein at 416.365.7557 or talia@zerofootprint.net.