One of the joys of corporate life as Tillerman pointed out is flying. Oh what fun. I can’t wait for my next trip. Sitting on the runway for 3 hours (hey, they left the gate on time so it’s an on time departure), getting delayed for 3 hours coming back and that wonderful in-flight service – You mean I get a free soda? Wow!
The other less-than-wonderful thing about flying is what it does for the environment. For example, a 1,000 mile trip on a commercial jet uses up 0.6 tons of CO2. You can calculate this yourself with the handy little online calculator on Conservation internationals website. I travel a lot. I fly about 40,000 miles a year so I use up 20-25 tons a year in CO2. Not something I am delighted about but it’s not optional in what I do.
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hankfully I can do something about it. Because I live close to Newark, I am a captive of Continental Airlines. They do a reasonable job but the other day I saw something as I was checking a reservation online that actually delighted me about them.
Continental makes it easy to buy back your carbon. They have have partnered with Sustainable Travel International to create a program called “eco-skies”. For example, I paid about $9 to offset my carbon for a trip to Denver. It was incredibly simple and gave me options on who the money went to.
Frankly I think they should make it mandatory but I expect that with all the additional taxes, the price of fuel and the dire troubles the airlines have, that would be a pipe dream.
Saving the Planet One Week At A Time – the Story So Far
Week 3 – Buying back the CO2 generated by my air travel
Week 2 – Switching to environmentally friendly light bulbs
Week 3 – Switching to recyclable toilet paper and
Good one! Its a shame that all airlines don’t offer the option to offset. There are a number of carbon calculators you can use to work out one’s total footprint and hence offset enough for other trips etc to go CO2 neutral and its not that much as % of total.
Check out terrapass too.
http://www.terrapass.com
I love these guys.