Offset your own emissions?

I love being slapped with something I don't know.

"Anonymous" asked this one off yesterday's email, where I asked about whether you'd prefer to work with a company who a) offsets 100% of their emissions, or b) has switched their finances to ethical banks:

👉 "Does "a" mean actively offset themselves or just pay someone else as part of an existing program?"

Initially, my reaction was "Well you can't offset your own emissions... I don't think... can you!?".

My thinking with offsets is that you either reduce your emissions literally, or you pay for offsets to do it figuratively.

But I'm not sure how it works for the companies who provide the offsets.

For example, if you're a company that grows trees or kelp forests, and sells ownership of them as offsets, at a guess I don't think you can count everything you grow as your own offset, because that would be counting the tree twice.

But I honestly don't know.

What I do know is that it's a juicy question, and while it probably won't help with anything whatsoever, I wouldn't mind finding out.

So I'm off on a hunt for answers but if you already know the answer, I'd love to hear from you!