How to Travel More Sustainably This Summer

School’s out for summer, and you’re excited to sightsee with family across Europe or relax with friends on a tropical island. But as much as you’d like to enjoy your time off without a care in the world, the reality is that the emissions from airplanes negatively impact the planet. However, that doesn’t mean you should never fly or have to feel guilty about every vacation.

Everyone has their own morality, and sometimes your values conflict, such as wanting to take care of the planet while experiencing the world. Instead of taking an all-or-nothing approach to flying, an alternative could be to take a more mindful approach to your travel, starting by calculating the carbon footprint of your flights.

Start by Calculating Your Flight’s Carbon Footprint

Once you know the airplane carbon emissions, you can make choices that might feel more aligned with your values, such as through one or a combination of the following solutions.

Choosing a Different Mode of Transportation

While flying is convenient, it’s not always the most efficient environmentally. The average CO₂e emissions per flight per person works out to roughly 250 kg per hour of flight time, according to Carbon Independent. This hour of flight time equates to roughly 637 miles driven in an average gas-powered car, according to the EPA.

So, when you add up the full flight emissions for everyone in your group vs. equivalent emissions from driving, you’ll have to weigh which one has the lowest impact. However, don’t assume driving is always better. A solo traveler taking a cross-country flight from New York to LA, for example, likely emits less than if you drove the same distance in a gas-powered car. But if you had multiple people in the car, or if you had an electric vehicle, the calculations between flying vs. driving emissions would change.

Other transportation options like trains, if applicable to your travel plans, might be even more efficient, but don’t make any assumptions here either. Some long-distance train trips end up emitting more than flying, as one New York Times reporter found. However, shorter train trips or ones on electrified tracks are likely more efficient.

If you’re traveling across a large body of water, driving isn’t an option, of course, but don’t assume a cruise is better. Again, much depends on the specifics, but an airplane is often more efficient than a cruise.

Choosing a Different Destination or Route

As you consider your mode of transportation and the potential carbon footprint of your flight, you might end up choosing a different destination or route for your travel. Instead of flying or taking a long cruise, for example, you might decide to take a more local trip that’s an efficient train ride or car ride away.

You also might still decide to fly, but as you consider destinations, you might look for below-average CO₂ flights using a tool like Google Flights, where you can see if certain routes have higher or lower emissions than usual. That might be due to factors such as the type of aircraft or the plane’s route, and you might find that flying a further distance doesn’t always equate to more airplane emissions. A direct flight, for example, generally saves emissions compared to the combined impact of connecting flights.

Finding Other Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Whether you’re set on taking a certain vacation or you need to fly for a work trip that’s out of your hands, there are still things you can do to reduce the net impact of your travel.

For example, if you have two trips planned and you calculate the impact these have, you might compromise by only taking the one that feels most important and canceling the other. Or, you might find other areas of your life where you can reduce your personal carbon footprint, such as by changing your driving habits, eating less meat, or switching to renewable energy in your home.

These sustainability choices don’t necessarily give you license to fly as much as you want, but we all have to make tradeoffs in life. You might find that you’re more comfortable with the carbon emissions of a particular flight if you can cut back in other areas.

Buying Carbon Offsets

Lastly, you might decide to buy carbon offsets to help compensate for your carbon footprint, whether you decide to fly or use other forms of transportation for your travels.

Although carbon offsets are not meant to be a substitute for reducing your emissions, meaning they don’t give you free rein to fly all over the world without care, they can help to balance the negative impact of your travel with positive impact in other areas. For example, you can purchase carbon credits that help finance important projects such as reforestation or landfill methane capture. These projects can compensate for the carbon footprint of your air travel by removing emissions from the atmosphere or preventing emissions that would have otherwise occurred.

To some extent, you can think about it like calories. If you indulge in a doughnut, you might try to offset those calories by going for a run the next day. They don’t always perfectly counteract each other, as there can also be health impacts beyond the calories, but in general, you’re trying to find balance. Similarly, you might indulge in a flight for a summer vacation and try to balance that environmental impact by buying carbon offsets.

There’s a lot to consider beyond emissions, such as airplane air pollution and noise pollution, sort of like how a doughnut might also be bad for your cholesterol. However, carbon offset programs can have positive social benefits beyond emissions, such as supporting job creation, similar to how running might help your cardiovascular health, beyond the caloric effects.

Start Balancing Your Carbon Footprint

Whether you already have summer travel plans booked or you want to start balancing other areas of your life, you can take advantage of the variety of carbon offset plans that Terrapass offers.

One option is to use our flight carbon calculator and purchase carbon credits based on the specific amount of emissions from that trip, or you can directly purchase flight carbon offsets based on the number of miles you’re traveling. Terrapass has been ranked as one of the top travel carbon footprint calculators by multiple academic studies, so you can have confidence in calculating your flight emissions with us. You also might prefer a more overarching plan that might help balance the flight and other aspects of your vacation with our EcoTourist Bundle.[1],[2]

If you want to balance your carbon footprint on more of an ongoing basis, rather than just for specific flights, you might choose options like our Carbon Balance Living subscription that starts at just $8.34 per month, depending on your circumstances.

By calculating your carbon footprint and buying carbon offsets, you can get a better sense of how your actions affect the environment and you can start making changes that support a more sustainable planet.

Start reducing your carbon footprint today, before relaxing on your summer vacation.

Calculate Your Carbon Footprint & Offset Now

Sources

• [1] Arif, Elizabeth, Anupama A. Sharan, and Warren Mabee. An Analysis of Compatibility Between Popular Carbon Footprint Calculators and the Canadian National Inventory Report. 12 June 2025.
• [2] Mulrow, et al. The State of Carbon Footprint Calculators: An Evaluation of Calculator Design and User Interaction Features. December 2018.