Lyft rides are now carbon neutral
You can thank carbon-offset projects for that.
Now you can spring for the fancy Lyft and not feel as bad about the oceans swelling to consume the coasts.
Lyft already provides a green-ish benefit by turning drivers into passengers, but soon, those rides will do even more to keep the planet from boiling us all alive.
In a post on Medium, Lyft co-founder John Zimmer announced that all Lyft rides are now carbon neutral, which means the carbon-based emissions produced by a Lyft ride will be canceled out in other ways.
No, that doesn't mean Zimmer is planting a tree for every ride you take -- that'd be a full-time job itself, considering the company has served tens of millions of rides. Instead, the rides will be offset with projects meant to help the environment.
"Lyft rides are now carbon-neutral through the direct funding of 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," Zimmer wrote in the Medium post.
Zimmer pointed out that this won't be cheap. In the first year alone, it'll cost the ride-hailing company millions of dollars, making it one of the top voluntary buyers of carbon-offset programs in the world. It's also partnered with a firm that will make sure all of Lyft's investments go toward programs that wouldn't have existed if not for that investment, rather than seeing the company pour money into projects that would have been offsetting carbon emissions no matter what.
The company is already a part of We Are Still In, a program established after the US announced its separation from the Paris Climate Accord.
