Becoming a Carbon Neutral Gym

After visiting Donelly River in November for CFMR’s 6th Birthday celebrations an idea was born. What if we made the gym Carbon Neutral?

Coach Ben briefed a few of the members on the idea and they thought the idea was a great one. Niall one of the members already offset his carbon emissions from his car by paying a fee each year to a company called Go Neutral.

When Ben got home he did some research and found there was 3 steps to becoming a carbon neutral gym.

First Reduce your carbon footprint. In this picture with this story you can see Carly holding the sketchy ladder to replace out the old Halogen lights for the gym with LED energy efficient lights. We have also installed a water filter to stop buying single use plastic water bottles. We are planning on going digital, rather than using a printer when new members join. Tom (one of the CFMR’s green team members) donated an old iPad to support this initiative. We have a list of other initiatives that we will be ticking off, over the next several months. One member even suggested members not wear clothes to workout in, to save on the energy for washing and making clothes. But we are still considering this one ;)

Second Measure your carbon footprint. There are a number of online Carbon Calculators to help with this. We used Carbon Neutral’ s Calculator. We found out we emit nearly 10 tonnes of carbon a year! We had no idea a small gym could emit this much.

Third Offset your carbon footprint. This can be done a number of ways and we are still figuring which option is best for us. You can actually buy certified carbon offsets at about $30 AUD a tonne from third party companies that are audited. There are also a number of tree planting options too which help reforest damaged bush areas and at the same time; the trees help consume the Co2 in the air.

Anyways we are new to this and please reach out to us if you would like to join our green team to make our Gym’s environmental efforts live long into the future.

At CFMR we believe we are more than just a gym. If we are serious about improving the health of our population; we have to also consider the health of our planet and how we can help there too. Like improving our fitness if we can all day one small thing for the planet, we can help turn around this climate crisis we are all experiencing.

Lets go Green together; for us, our children and our children’s children and beyond.