Wyler Geneve GMT Watch Pays To Be Green Friendly, Literally

by Ariel Adams (RSS feed)
Feb 25th 2009 at 12:02PM

I do like Wyler Geneve watches a lot, and their newest GMT watch brings something new to the table that won't affect how it looks or its accuracy. Wyler Geneve proudly proclaims that their new GMT watch is the first CarbonNeutral® watch. Let's look at this a bit more closely. I'd like to think this means that the watch itself is environmentally friendly. Maybe it will biodegrade, and is made of that corn plastic that those new disposable forks I can tear in half are made out of? No it is something else. Wyler Geneve has bought into something called carbon offsetting. Now you get an idea why the above term is not "carbon neutral," but rather the trademarked name "CarbonNeutral." CarbonNeutral has an interesting business model going for themselves, with an increasing amount of business interest and attention. I'll explain briefly how it works.

If you are interested in being more environmentally friendly, but cannot really change how to you do business, you can buy yourself into the 'green club.' A basic evaluation of your business is done to determine your environmental impact, or at least how much waste your business is emitting. You can then purchase offsets, it's like eco-karma. Does your factory pollute noxious gas into the air? Fund a green campaign else where that does the opposite. The idea is to offset your environmentally unfriendly ways with environmentally friendly programs elsewhere. This is not to say that Wyler Geneve is a big polluter at all, just that they decided to participate in carbon offsetting, and felt that working with CarbonNeutral was a good idea. Thus, they have started with the new GMT, offsetting where necessary to make this product CarbonNeutral. It is a good thing, maybe a PR stunt, but overall you can't complain that it does any harm. Wyler Geneve points out that it is the first watch to participate in a CarbonNeutral program. I think the best part is the humbling experience that it must have gone through when trying to determine its actual emissions and environmental impact of making the watch. The pictured new Wyler Geneve GMT watch is in steel with a rubber strap and rugged good looks.

Ariel Adams publishes the watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

Tags: CarbonNeutral, Geneve, GMT, Wyler