TUCKED away amongst the businesses of Basing View, there is one particular company that deals with pop-stars and royalty.

Carbon Footprint Ltd has planted hundreds of thousands of trees and offset millions of tonnes of carbon over the last 14 years.

They help businesses, and individuals, to calculate their carbon footprint, and then offset that by supporting projects around the world that reduces carbon emissions.

The company also has a number of high-profile clients - in the summer they hit the headlines for helping the Duke and Duchess of Sussex offset their private jet travel.

The royal couple drew criticism in the press for taking journeys on Sir Elton John’s private jet whilst then urging people to reduce their carbon footprint.

However, Sir Elton paid the Basingstoke company to support projects to balance out the carbon released into the atmosphere from those trips.

It does not stop carbon being emitted into the atmosphere in the first place - which many, including Extinction Rebellion who were banned from protesting in London this week, are demanding.

According to Carbon Footprint’s managing director, John Buckley, it can help until low-carbon initiatives are commonplace.

He said that carbon offsetting takes four main forms - supporting renewable energy, stopping deforestation, planting more trees and increasing energy efficiency.

By calculating the carbon that these projects take out of the atmosphere, a donation can be worked out for the customer to offset against their carbon footprint.

“Climate change is a global problem, so it does need a global solution,” John told the Gazette.

“Being able to support projects around the world, not just in the UK, is part of the solution to climate change.”

John said that people need to become carbon smart, by first understanding what their carbon footprint is, and then how to reduce or offset it.

Your carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide released into the environment as a result of your activities, and encompasses everything from travel to energy usage to food consumption.

“If you’re a homeowner and you’re buying a new electricity tariff, switch to a green energy tariff, that’s the easiest thing most people can do,” John continued.

He said that as well as this, fitting LED light bulbs and making sure your house is well insulated are easy ways to save money as well as helping the planet.

“When you’re going on holiday, you need to think about whether you need to take a flight - can you holiday at home? If you’re going on holiday overseas and you feel that you need to take a flight, just think about the distance that you’re going.

“A flight to Barcelona is about half the distance as a flight to Tenerife.

“People should go on and do the carbon calculation and understand where their carbon emissions are coming from.”

For businesses, it starts in the same place.

“Once you know where the carbon emissions are coming from you can start focusing on those areas, the biggest part of the pie chart.”

Otherwise, John has similar advice for businesses as he does members of the public.

“For small businesses, coming up very soon there will be a pot of funding that will help them do energy surveys in their building, from the M3 Local Enterprise Partnership.

“Lots of companies will have a target to be net carbon zero, but I’d suggest you’d start looking at bringing that target a lot sooner.”

However, John said that people are a lot more aware of their impact on the climate than previously following a lot of media attention.

He cites Extinction Rebellion protests, David Attenborough documentaries, young people being mobilised by Greta Thunberg and Donald Trump’s climate scepticism as reasons for people becoming both more aware and more passionate about the climate crisis.

“There’s lots of pressure coming from lots of different areas and I think it’s just now got people really thinking about it,” John told this newspaper.

“It’s no bigger problem than it was a year ago, but people are probably a little bit more aware of it now.

“Things are happening in the UK, if you look at the electricity grid, the carbon emissions associated with it are coming down year on year as more low carbon fuels and renewables are used.

“We’re seeing a steady progress of what the UK is doing, and it’s not just the UK that’s doing this, it is happening around the world.

“The solution to climate change is actually really straight forward. The first thing to do is decarbonise all of the electricity grids, not just the UK but around the world.”

John said, like most ways to combat climate change, there is effort there, but it needs to be accelerated.

Secondly, transportation needs to be decarbonised: “Switching to electric cars and charging them with renewable electricity will help do that.

“But there’s also planes, trains, lorries and ships that also need to go down that same route. In those areas we are seeing electrical lorries coming on board, but shipping is one that needs to be sorted out.

“The other thing that we need to look at is agriculture and making sure that the food we are eating is sustainably produced.”

John says that this isn’t simply about not eating meat, but about making sure that all food is produced in a carbon neutral manner.

Also on the list is to stop deforestation and take out the carbon that’s already in the atmosphere, something called carbon sequestration.

“We need more and more people to be doing the right things,” John continued.

“Will we get there? I’d like to think we will.”