Hopper launches initiative to lessen travelers' carbon footprint

Travel booking company, Hopper, has developed a new initiative to help lower its carbon footprint and lessen the environmental impact of its customers' travel.

The new Hopper Trees program will donate funds to plant up to four trees per flight sold and up to two trees per hotel room booked through Hopper. The company estimates it will sponsor at least six million trees in 2020.

Hopper Founder and CEO Frederic Lalonde said in a statement:

“Beginning today, Hopper will be the first travel-booking app to offer free carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions offsets on behalf of our customers for every flight and hotel purchased in the app."

The donations will go to Eden Reforestation Projects, an SGS Forest Management-certified 501c3 non-profit organization that has planted more than 265 million trees in deforested areas in Madagascar, Indonesia, Kenya and Mozambique over the past 15 years.

Hopper cited research led by a Swiss lab that found global reforestation efforts have been “one of the most effective carbon drawdown solutions to date,” with “the potential to store an equivalent of 25% of the current atmospheric carbon pool.”

Carbon emissions are one of the biggest negative impacts of air travel. A single one-way economy seat between New York and Los Angeles generates approximately 2,205 pounds of carbon dioxide on average, according to the Atmosfair carbon emissions calculator. That’s the same amount of carbon dioxide the average car produces in two and a half months, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculations.

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