Carbon Neutral?

This topic is getting about as funny as Tanya Harding doing speaking engagements and telling the world that she's been misunderstood as an athlete despite attacking her opponent in the Olympic skating competition. There are actually manufacturers trying to con the buying public into saying that they are making a "carbon neutral" carpet. Think about this. What are these mills doing, riding the carpet to the job site on bicycles and manufacturing using gerbils?
Let's get serious; this is a marketing effort at its finest. But wait, is it the manufacturers fault? Not really. See, it is the industry that allows mills to say this because the industry can buy credits to offset things they have yet to fix in their manufacturing processes. In reality, there is no such thing as carbon neutral carpet, unless of course you factor in the highly debated practice of buying carbon credits and trying to say that you have offset all of the bad practices that you are doing while making carpet. Now, even if you buy the story that those "offsets" really do offset your carbon footprint when making carpet, that doesn't make the carpet you manufacture carbon neutral, it just makes people feel better about buying the carpet you make.
The reality is that making commercial carpet these days is an energy intensive non carbon neutral process. It doesn't make it horrible it's just not carbon neutral by any manufacturer anywhere. Several mills are doing really fantastic things in terms of sustainability, but selling the story that your company is carbon neutral or your product is totally carbon neutral is like saying planting trees makes your carpet green. It might make the forest green but until manufacturers change their carpet construction, materials, manufacturing process, and are taking back all their materials and are turning them into new products, they should stop calling their carpets "carbon neutral." If you want to tell the world that you are doing well by doing good then do well and stop marketing the carbon neutral lie. As a real estate professional, don’t make “carbon neutral” the reason to buy a certain mill. Look deeper at the products themselves, the processes, and the performance and then make a decision.