Lyft Says All of Its Rides Are Now Carbon Neutral

San Francisco-based ride-hailing company Lyft announced Thursday that all of its rides will now be carbon neutral. The project is a multi-million dollar investment and will offset more than one million metric tons of carbon in the first year alone.

That would be the equivalent of "planting tens of millions of trees or taking hundreds of thousands of cars off the road," Lyft co-founders John Zimmer and Logan Green wrote in a Medium blog post.

The initiative will fund "emission mitigation" projects, including reduction of emissions in the automotive manufacturing process, forestry initiatives, renewable energy programs and capturing emissions from landfills. Last year, Lyft hired environmentalist Paul Hawken to be its environmental advisor and joined the We Are Still In coalition, a group of businesses and leaders committed to supporting the Paris Climate Accord.

According to the most recent numbers available from the Environmental Protection Agency, light-duty vehicles are responsible for 60% of US transportation greenhouse gas emissions.

Although the company declined to provide a precise dollar amount for the program, Zimmer pledged that in the first year alone, the ride-sharing company will invest millions of dollars:

"In year one, we anticipate offsetting over a million metric tons of carbon, equivalent to planting tens of millions of trees or taking hundreds of thousands of cars off the road," he said. "Lyft's investment and impact will continue to grow as the company does."

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Photo by Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for Lyft.