Have you ever thought about the environmental footprint of your travel?
The Boeing 747-400, the plane most used for international flights, emits 202.8 pounds of carbon per hour. That's 1,419.6 pounds ofcarbon for a seven-hour flight. To put it into perspective, it would take an acre of forest just over twenty-two days to absorb that amount of carbon in a flight from New York to London. This same amount of carbon emissions is comparable to what a person living in Zimbabwe generates over an entire year. Travel is an extraordinary opportunity, but it comes with a cost. If we are going to expend the amount of carbon necessary to get us to another location, we have a responsibility to learn from those we meet and the systems we encounter - and most importantly, to have a positive rather than negative impact.