Starting tomorrow and continuing through the second day of 2008, if you buy a new Volkswagen in the US, Volkswagen of America, Inc. will buy you a year's worth of carbon offsets from Carbonfund.org. The offsets will come through re-forestation in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, a place that used to be a wetland ecosystem that but was converted to mostly farmland. Carbonfund and VW will plant 250,000 native trees there, enough to call this place "The VW Forest."

Carbonfund's slogan is "Reduce what you can, offset what you can't." The program's VW page explains just how little this promotion will cost VW per vehicle. An annual CO2 offset for even the biggest vehicles (ones that get between 15 and 25 mpg) costs just $40.25; for cars that get more than 35 mpg, the cost is only $17.25. And that's what it costs individuals; I assume there is some sort of corporate/promotional discount that VW is getting. Still, planting more trees is a good thing.

Press release after the jump.

[Source: VW, Carbonfund]