Business Edge: Susan Mate

A growing number of tour and travel organizations in Canada are rethinking their business plans as customers clamour to reduce their environmental footprint in new ways, such as buying carbon offsets from airlines and other companies.

Air Canada has teamed up with Zerofootprint, a Toronto-based non-profit agency that works to help companies and organizations become more carbon-neutral.

The airline, which links directly to a carbon dioxide (CO2) calculator on the zerofootprint.ca website, says it is also embracing other green initiatives, such as using more hybrid technology and less polluting fuels for ground support vehicles. Improved fuel efficiency is also a crucial part of the carrier’s newer aircraft, officials say.

“By working with Zerofootprint, we will make it easy for people to calculate the impact of their journey and mitigate those effects with a small voluntary additional payment to support environmental projects that reduce greenhouse gases,” says Air Canada marketing vice-president Charles McKee.

The Zerofootprint website provides information about carbon offsets and its calculator allows travellers to determine how much CO2 their trip will generate – about 800 kilograms per person on a Montreal-Vancouver return trip, for example.

Based on Air Canada’s aircraft specifications, that would cost customers an extra $12.80 each to offset – compared to the carbon generated by driving a 2005 Honda Civic about 20,000 kilometres.

The initiative “balances out climate-changing carbon dioxide that is put into the atmosphere by our activities, it highlights the environmental costs of goods and services we buy and, when you offset with (planting) trees, it restores ecosystems, habitats, watersheds, green communities and creates jobs,” says Zerofootprint executive director Deborah Kaplan.

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