Toronto Star: Ellen Roseman

If you fly a lot for business or pleasure, you may feel bad about adding to global warming.

“For most people, flying is kind of magical. Too bad that stuff coming out of the engines isn’t fairy dust,” says Adria Vasil, author of Ecoholic: Your Guide to the Most Environmentally Friendly Products, Information and Services in Canada (Vintage, $24.95).

Is there a way to ease the pain of a guilty conscience, aside from finding other ways to travel?

Yes, says Vasil, you can ease the impact with “green tags.” This means you offset the carbon your flight creates by investing in renewable energy or planting trees.

Air Canada recently launched a carbon offset program with Zerofootprint, a non-profit organization in Toronto.

WestJet works with Offsetters.ca on renewable energy projects in Canada and overseas. When you book flights through the Offsetters website, the airline contributes 2 per cent of the base fare, with no cost to the customer, says spokesperson Gillian Bentley.

Other airlines plan to follow suit. But you can try to neutralize the impact of flights on your own, using online calculators.

Continue reading the full article in the Toronto Star.