Monzo should’ve offered carbon offsetting for its paid-for plan, that would’ve been a big USP over insurance and ‘offers’.
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Carbon offsetting would cost a fair penny (pardon the pun)
But carbon offsetting is a scam… I sincerely hope Monzo doesn’t go down that road.
The only thing carbon offsetting achieves is for the upper classes to feel happier about themselves.
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Well it does actually do some good for the planet too.
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It kind of doesn’t - you should have a look online.
The only thing that’s really improving the planet is producing less carbon in the first place…
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It is something I’ve researched quite significantly. I don’t personally see how paying to plant a few trees every month, or making small financial contributions towards the development of renewable infrastructures kind of doesn’t help the planet. The only qualm I really have is in the terminology of offsetting because that’s not how I view it.
Reducing your carbon footprint only does so much, and doesn’t give back. As regular people I think it’s next to impossible to live carbon positively, or even neutrally, without also doing stuff to actively give back to the planet, either through carbon offsetting, or investing. The onus is on governments and business to enable the possibility of living carbon neutrally. For now, offsetting programs are an easy collective way to give back. I support them, but despise the fact they exist, because they shouldn’t be necessary.
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This really resonates with me.
I’m forever arguing with friends when I choose to use plastic products when they’d choose some vegan planet friendly thing. Take plastic bottles for example. I continue to use buy single use plastics because that’s what’s provided - if they had a system like Germany where things are distributed in glass bottles and are collected systematically it would be perfect and I’d be all for it.
Then there’s the whole plastic straw thing and the paper replacements are waxed or otherwise chemically treated, have a higher carbon footprint and aren’t recyclable - but on the other hand people think that they’re better which is what the businesses intentions are.
I remember seeing a while ago, possibly here, that Ryanair had £1 offsetting on their flights. Literally nothing £1 is going to do to offset the damage caused by that journey.
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As I understand it, sometimes offsetting send money to projects which were going to go ahead anyway. For example, someone decides to plant trees in an area, and an offsetting fund steps in and provides some finance for it.
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The only thing carbon offsetting achieves is for the upper classes to feel happier about themselves.
Completely agree. It just supports/encourages people going on more flights or doing more environmentally unfriendly things on the completely false basis that they can ‘offset’ the damage.
Even if the carbon offsetting funds actually contributed to a significant amount of new carbon reduction projects (they don’t), unless the fund is planting those trees in the stratosphere it isn’t really offsetting anything.
Right now it’s really hard to reduce waste. The only plastic free supermarket near me is miles away and so expensive I could never dream of shopping there (pasta is like £3.50 / kilo for example). I’d be so happy to take my tupperware to a supermarket and fill up if I could do it. And for flights - if I could convince my company to stop sending me on all those pointless business trips I could save a lot of carbon, but they keep insisting on them (maybe post pandemic they’ll be better).
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Did someone say carbon offsetting, trees and Monzo (employees)?
Wouldn’t it be better to be a charity and not a profit making company?..
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That’s answered in the FAQs:
We thought about being a charity too, but we’d have to hire big teams of fundraisers to keep us going. For example, for every £1 of money the British Heart Foundation receives, they spend 26.2p on their charitable activities, 40.6p fundraising and 33.2p generating income. It’s a great charity, but we think we can have the most impact as a B-Corp.
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How does Luna make money?
We add a 20% fee to your monthly subscription that goes to Luna.
What’s the Monzo connection here? 
I’d assume the 3 friends who made Luna were Monzo employees?
The Luna website doesn’t give much away in terms of founders names/history, but Luna isn’t listed on the 
nauts website: https://monzonauts.com/
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Out of interest, why?
I would say no, a business is a better legal structure given what they are doing. They aren’t taking donations or organising direct aid so the extra governance of a charity wouldn’t be necessary.
Think I’ll just stick to my current subscription company for this
What do you use?