Offset Your Holiday Travel…For Free

Long-distance travel increases by 23 percent during the Christmas and New Year holiday period, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Considering a round-trip flight from Los Angeles to New York City represents 1,780 pounds of CO2 emissions, you can imagine the carbon footprint our nation has around the holidays.

Become a Facebook fan of Travelocity and offset your holiday carbon emissions for free. Photo: Flickr/caribb

Though it doesn’t exactly erase your holiday travel from the carbon records, carbon offsets are a great option to consider when booking your trip. Whether you’re traveling by plane, train or automobile, the purchase of carbon offsets represents the reduction in carbon emissions elsewhere, allowing you to minimize your impact.

Carbon offsets work by investing the equivalent carbon emissions of your trip in carbon reduction projects, such as renewable energy or reforestation.

If you’re willing to contribute the tax-deductible dollar amount, Web sites like Carbonfund.org make it easy for travelers to invest in emission reduction projects. However,  it’s that dollar amount, though usually small, that keeps many of us from offsetting our carbon, especially in hard financial times.

Travelocity, the online travel agency, is providing free carbon offsets for travel this holiday season. The company is donating a minimum of $10,000 to Conservation Fund for the planting of up to 1,000 native trees, trapping an estimated 1,000 metric tons of CO2 over their lifetime.

To participate, become a Facebook fan of Travelocity’s Roaming Gnome. Travelocity will make a donation to Conservation Fund with each new fan. And while you’re on Facebook, stop by Earth911’s page and become a fan as well!