My husband is not the toughest person to shop for, but since this holiday season he’s traveling to a far-off place, I thought I’d be a bit greener about his gift. Instead of buying something bulky or unneeded for his travels, I decided to offset the carbon emissions from his flights through TerraPass. TerraPass is a carbon offset program that coverts your carbon creating mileage into money towards clean energy and energy efficiency projects, therefore balancing out your bad, evil, greenhouse gas-creating tendencies. Geeky? Of course! But a truly great idea for ‘that which cannot be helped’ situations, like travel or driving to the supermarket at 2AM for ice cream…

TerraPass’s carbon offset system is very easy to use - plug in the make of your car and how much you drive each year, or, if you’re flying, the route of your flight, and TerraPass calculates how much CO2 your trip with emit. It then suggests how much your milage translates into money to donate. TerraPass works with various organizations, using your money to fund ‘three types of leading-edge projects: clean energy; farm power such as dairy farm methane capture; and landfill gas capture’. To date, TerraPass members have reduced over 600 million pounds of carbon dioxide through their trip offsetting. It’s definitely a logical step to being greener and cleaner, and helping to prevent global warming!

If you’re traveling this holiday, TerraPass is an inexpensive way to be environmentally aware. TerraPass also has a College TerraPass to offset a year’s worth of dorm room emissions (if that’s even possible) - a great gift for the budding environmentalist/video game addict in your family. If you’re getting married, plug in your guests’ travel info and hey! Carbon offsets for everyone! You’ll be surprised at how affordable something like TerraPass really is - and how much less guilty it can make you feel about hopping that flight to see the family this holiday season!