That Mexican getaway you’ve just booked to get you through the cold snap? The travel-planning checklist doesn’t stop once you’ve chosen a flight on Skyscanner (even if you did select the app’s new Greener Choice option to reduce your carbon footprint).
This year, travelling consciously is as easy as subscribing to Netflix: offsetting your carbon has gone high-tech.
Travel planning app TripIt does the hard work for you (free, tripit.com). The itinerary generator and flight tracker now lets you calculate the carbon footprint of your upcoming flight and offers practical ways to offset it from planting trees to donating to recycling projects. Its Carbon Footprint feature is available to both free and Pro users and sits alongside your flight details.
Meanwhile the OffCents app lets you track your carbon footprint across all your travel, whether it’s plane, train or car — an interesting way to work out the greenest route for your ski trip next month (free, offcents.com). Projects you can donate to include wind farms in India and biodiversity reserves in Indonesia.
Capture also tracks your travel, letting you offset your commute through certified forestry planting projects (free, thecapture.club), while East Barnet-based Co2nsensus lets you offset your entire lifestyle: its carbon calculator adds travel, food and home energy consumption to your “cart” before offering you projects to offset it (free, co2nsensus.com). Expect leaderboards and seasonal awards for the biggest offsetters — the greenest competition around.
Oroeco takes this a step further and gamifies your carbon offsetting (free, oroeco.com). The app, founded by former Nike and UN consultant Ian Monroe, lets you earn points for your climate actions such as using reusable bags and installing solar panels. Better still, points mean prizes: your hard-earned carbon credits can be redeemed against sustainable products like biodegradable soap or new solar power systems.
EarthTracks also offers carbon-friendly gaming (free, earthguardians.org). The app works like a “Fitbit for the planet”, tracking your carbon output in real-time and offering community initiatives, videos and challenges.
Subscription app Offset.earth offers more in-depth analysis and offsetting for less than £1.25 a week — like Strava Summit but for tracking carbon, not calories (offset.earth). To get started, create a profile and set your eco goals, whether it’s cycling to work or eating less red meat. The app measures your carbon output and charges you from £4.50 a month to offset one, two or four footprints every year.
According to its founders, if one per cent of the Earth’s population subscribed, Offset.earth would plant 900 million trees a month, taking billions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. That’s worth the cost of a couple of coffees.
