Normal Green: Offset Your Carbon Footprint While You Travel

Fellow Tonic News writer Cat Lincoln and I just returned from spending a couple days in Los Angeles. Imagine our surprise when, as we sat sipping vodka tonics aboard our Virgin America flight, we discovered we could lessen the environmental impact of our travels from the discomfort of our seats. Turns out cocktails aren't the only thing you can purchase on those touch-screens.

Carbonfund.org has partnered with several airlines, Virgin America being one of them, to allow passengers to offset their carbon as they book their flight — and even while they are climbing to their cruising altitude. As the folks at Carbonfund.org say, "It's good to see the world, but it's also good to have a world left to see. Flying is filling the wild blue yonder with more greenhouse gases every day." Did you know that a roundtrip flight from New York to Los Angeles emits more than 2,000 pounds of CO2? That's about a third of the amount a hybrid car emits in an entire year.

Carbonfund.org claims on its website to be leading the fight against global climate change, making it easy and affordable for any individual, business or organization to eliminate their climate impact hastening the transformation to a clean energy future. The first step is to reduce what you can, then offset what you can't.

How does it work? Once aboard our flight, we simply selected our itinerary (West Coast) from the touch-screen on the seatback in front of us, and with the swipe of a credit card, our $5 was helping to offset about 1,500 pounds of carbon emissions. Carbonfund.org supports carbon-reducing projects such as renewable energy, energy efficiency and reforestation projects. In fact, if you offset your carbon before takeoff, you get to choose where your money goes.

It was just that simple, and as we jetted towards Los Angeles, we felt less guilty about the pollution we were creating. I'm sure the vodka tonics helped, too.