Offset Your Conscience

With so much recent talk about carbon gas emissions and their impact on the environment it’s hard not to feel but a little self-conscious about jumping on a plane to embark on a vacation or business trip. While we don’t currently have alternatives for all our flying needs (we can choose to do a video conference over traveling to a business meeting but it would take the better part of a week to bus it down to Guatemala from Canada, by which time you would have to turn right back around if you’re on the typical 10 day vacation), there are things we can do to travel with a cleaner, greener conscience through 'climate-neutralizing' initiatives by companies like Offsetters. Offsetters, a Canadian based company, has an affiliate program with WestJet whereby if you book a ticket on Offsetters’ site (guaranteed to be the same price as if you book directly on WestJet’s site) you will also gain a carbon credit, which is then invested by Offsetters on projects that will reduce carbon gas emissions, resulting in ‘climate neutral’ travel. You can also use their flights calculator to figure out how much damage you are contributing each time you hop on a plane. This gives you the total distance traveled, carbon gas emissions for your trip, and the cost of these emissions. Traveling from Toronto to Seattle, for example, a distance of 3304 kms., results in 0.722 tonnes of CO2, a cost of $13.63. You can choose to buy offset credits for your CO2 cost that will be contributed to projects that will lower gas emission around the world, such as efficient cooking stoves in Honduras to help preserve their natural resources and improve their health standards, or restoring the rainforest in Uganda. The offset may not be perfect, given that some of your contribution must be used to cover overhead costs, but it certainly is a move in the right direction.

Anyone can buy credits online from Offsetters and the contributions are spread among projects around the globe. For a list of other companies going ‘climate neutral’ go to David Suzuki’s site.

Thanks to Geeky Traveler for letting us know about these sites.

This article was posted by Veronica Montero

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