OTR is run by Melissa Munro and Jane Peterson.  The entrepreneurs set the business up in 2007 on a hunch that sustainability and carbon footprint reduction would become as important to Nelson businesses as it would to the rest of the world. Three years on and they are excited about the new business collaboration with WHK.

"It's fantastic, a really brilliant fit", says Melissa. "I think green accounting is a huge area of growth and potentially in the future, people will be accounting for carbon in the same way that they are now accounting for GST. I do believe there will bemore and more responsibilities placed on businesses to put these systems into place and if you start now you will be ahead of expected regulations."

The company sells only Gold Standard offsets that are generated through renewable energy or energy efficiency technologies such as wind farms and bio mass projects. This integrity and commitment to the environment has seen them rewarded. Offset The Rest has been named as one of the top three carbon offset providers worldwide in the ENDS Guide to Carbon Offsets (a publication by Haymarket, UK).

So if you don't want to reduce your carbon footprint to appease customers, shareholders, parent companies or eco-minded employees, there's always the appeal of saving money.  Jane says, "The other really good thing for businesses, especially in the last year, is that if you do the exercise right, you'll reduce your operating costs and at the moment, everyone's looking to cut costs where they can. So it's nice that not only are you doing something from an environmental perspective but you'll also see a direct effect on the bottom line."

"The great thing about this business", says Melissa, "is people are excited by it and they end up having a passion for it." It starts off as an accounting process but becomes an integral part of your operating practices.

For more information visit  www.offsettherest.com