Responsible travel:
Experience the world on less CO₂

In 2017, global flight traffic emitted more than 859 million tons of CO₂, which accounted for approx. 2% of global man-made CO₂ emissions. But flying also emits non-carbon emissions like ozone, soot particles and nitrogen oxide that, when emitted at altitudes over 5 ½ miles, account for 4% to 5% of global warming.
How much CO₂ a single plane emits depends on factors like aircraft type, distance traveled and passenger load. You can see how much your flight will emit by using our Least CO₂ sorter in your search.

Source:
International Air Transport Association
Carbon Brief

Flight compensation is a way to “make up for” the CO₂ emissions that were used to fly a passenger to their final destination by allowing the passenger to contribute to projects that will either remove existing CO₂ from the atmosphere (e.g. planting trees) or reduce future CO₂ emissions (e.g. solar farms or research into sustainable aviation fuel).

Many organizations and companies – including some airline companies – have CO₂ calculators that let you calculate how much CO₂ your flight has emitted and then offset your portion of those emissions. The most important thing to remember is that if you choose to offset your flight, make sure your money is helping fund a validated project. Look for projects that have e.g. the CDM Gold Standard and VCS certification labels, which means their environmental effects are closely monitored.

You can read more about flight compensation in this Discover article.

Taking most of the common forms of transportation into account – plane, train, car, biking and walking – it’s no surprise that biking and walking are the least CO₂-intensive ways to get around. Some say that biking actually emits less than walking because we require less food-fueled energy to go the same distance by bike than by foot, which translates into fewer CO₂ emissions that went into growing, packaging and transporting the food. (If you want to dig even deeper, you can also factor in CO₂ emitted from our bodies during the walk/bike ride, which would be fewer on the bike ride because, even though we may be breathing harder, we would still be breathing less overall in that distance than walking.)

Of course, it’s hard for most people to bike or walk longer distances. Between planes, trains and cars, trains emit the least CO₂ by far. According to one study, a trip from London to Edinburgh emits 282 lbs. CO₂eq by plane, 220 lbs. CO₂eq by car and only 46 lbs. CO₂eq by train.

Say you do a flight search on momondo and see two good possibilities: one that emits 4,982 lbs. of CO₂ and one that emits 4,156 lbs.g CO₂ (19% less). So how does this 826 lbs. of difference in CO₂ compare to the rest of your carbon footprint? According to this calculator, an 826 lb. (19%) CO₂ reduction is the equivalent of driving a passenger car 930 miles.