Last year we spoke about the Mongol Rally and even interviewed one of the participating teams. What's this? A charity rally departing three European cities (this year: London, Milan and Madrid) that tries to reach Ulan Bator, the capital city of Mongolia. In order to participate in this rally, cars should have engines under 1 liter of capacity (and motorbikes under 125 cm³) and teams have to raise at least £1,000 to participate. This year, the Spanish teams will have a partner, Bosques Naturales, that is going to plant more than 100 trees that will offset the estimated 2-tons (metric) of CO₂ that each car will produce during the event.

[Source: Mongol Rally and Agronoticias]

In Southern California, the local Honda Dealers Association is trying to be "helpful" to the environment. That "helpful" tag is how the Association is branding itself (just check out the website) and, in partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, the latest helpful move is to hand out reusable shopping bags and plant some trees in Southern California. The program started Wednesday and runs through the end of the month.

If you're interested in a bag, you can pick one up in SoCal cities in places like grocery stores and farmers markets and recycling stations. Each time someone takes a bag, Honda and the Arbor Day Foundation will plant a tree in an effort to replenish what was lost in last year's wildfire. It seems like bag recipients will need to go to the website to enter a code to have the tree planted in their name. More details after the jump.

Another airline has decided to give passengers the option to offset your carbon emissions when purchasing plane tickets. The latest carbon offset entrant is clickair, a low-cost company based in Barcelona, Spain. The story is that, due to Barcelona's airport placement between two lagoons and a protected area, the airline's carbon offsets take place close to El Prat de Llobregat airport, in a reserve by the Llobregat river.

Prices start at very acceptable levels (€ 3) and with low expectations: clickair expects to plant 250 trees through this program which will cover at least a little bit of the effects of its fleet of ten Airbus A320s.

[Source: Clickair]

In 2008, if your factories aren't the cleanest in the world, you can always compensate with some kind of carbon-balancing intervention to fix things. Such is the case of tiremaker Yokohama Rubber Company (YRC), which just announced that it's going to plant half a million trees, which equal 25 acres of forest. YRC will plant these trees at seven facilities in Japan and 11 overseas. For Yokohama USA headquarters in Salem, VA, the estimated planted surface will be one acre.

This tree-planting initiative is part of Yokohama's "Forever Forest," a long-term project being carried out as part of YRC's environmental preservation activities. The company states that planting trees has a lot of benefits, from absorbing carbon from the atmosphere to provide shelter in case of an earthquake [sic].

Related:

• Toyota also installing wind turbines in Wales plant
• Nissan installs more wind turbines at Sunderland plant
• Nissan to save some CO2 by installing solar panels on Spanish plants

[Source: Yokohama]