Delta To Provide Passengers With Offset Option

April 19, 2007

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Delta Air Lines says it will become the first U.S. airline to give customers the option of buying trees to help offset carbon emissions associated with their air travel. To kick off the program, Delta is making a donation to The Conservation Fund for every customer taking a Delta mainline or Delta Shuttle flight on Earth Day, April 22, and is pledging a commitment to plant a tree for each of the airline’s 47,000 employees.

Beginning June 1, customers who purchase a ticket online will have the option to contribute toward the offset of carbon emissions associated with air travel through a donation to The Conservation Fund. Contributions of $5.50 for a domestic roundtrip flight and $11 for an international roundtrip flight will be used to plant trees throughout the U.S. and abroad. A small portion of the donation will also supports the organization’s education and outreach efforts.

Delta has launched an email campaign to promote the initiative.

Other airlines, including Cathay Pacific, Virgin Blue, and SAS have similar programs.

British Airways has taken some heat for not putting enough marketing muscle behind its voluntary program.

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Reader Comments

Gosh I love how exact Delta’s science is. We just posted a list of all the brands who are offering carbon offsets and we are thinking about going through and rating them. I’m surprised Delta’s approach is to forgo calculating emissions based on the actual flight miles of the customer’s trip and instead is just saying oh it’s about five dollars worth of trees (that, by the way, have to live for 100 years and then NOT fall down and decompose if we you want your CO2 to stay out of the atmosphere).
Why don’t they use a carbon calculator? They have enough technology to fly a 747 but can’t pay a web guy for a couple hours to add some simple math to their site? They could partner up with almost any carbon offset retailer to get a carbon calculator for free but instead they just guess…? Doesn’t make tons of sense to me…

Chistopher Keys | June 14th, 2008