Greenfleet's mission is "to enable the community to reduce the environmental impact of their travel, business and lifestyle choices by adopting low-carbon alternatives and biosequestration".

Greenfleet educates people on choosing "a fuel-efficient vehicle from the class of vehicle that best suits your needs", gives tips on how to drive fuel-efficiently and offers to plant 17 native trees on your behalf to off-set your car's carbon emissions for one year.

While revegetation is a crucial part of restoring our native habitat, suggesting that planting 17 trees makes your vehicle "green" is misleading.

17 trees will not prevent your car from emitting the following types of air pollution as stated by the EPA:

1. Exhaust emissions: including dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, hydrocarbons and particulates.
2. Evaporative emissions: vapours of fuel which are released into the atmosphere, without being burnt.

17 trees will also not reduce the globes unsustainable thirst for petroleum, an industry that involves high energy use, land degradation and loss of species habitat in the extraction and production processes, and causes extensive environmental damage through accidental spillage.

There are many organisations popping up that offer to off-set carbon emissions by planting trees. These programs are self monitored. Therefore, there is no independent assessment to determine if the trees planted are native trees that are appropriate to the area, or whether revegetation techniques are employed that create eco-systems rather than monocultures (monocultures do not provide habitat for wildlife and may cause local extinction by preventing the return of indigenous plants).

Greenfleet is a not-for-profit organisation; however, it's major supporters are commercial interests, especially those in the car industry. Principal supporters include City Link, RACV, Toyota Tsusho, President Ford and Capital Transport.

THE ALTERNATIVE

If you want to plant trees to off-set your carbon emissions we recommend you give your money directly to an NGO that has expert knowledge in revegetation and is committed to conservation, such as Bush Heritage Australia, Trust for Nature or Tree Poject.

Alternatively, you could give your $51 Greenfleet payment to a group that is working to protect the last remnants of Australia's native forests that are home to endangered species as well as carbon. These forests are currently being logged at a rate equivalent to more than 20 MCG sized football fields every day in eastern Victoria alone, according to The Wilderness Society. Native forests are being cleared at a rate faster than all new trees being planted.

As far as alternative transport goes, fuel efficient cars are no solution to climate change or peak oil. Long term transport strategies must include better public transport systems, less reliance on motor vehicles, non-petroleum transport solutions, and better infrastructure for clean transport such as bicycles.