Skip to main content

Combat travel-induced climate guilt with an app that plants trees

Flying produces the most greenhouse gases out of any form of travel, but a travel app wants to reduce your carbon footprint if you must get in a plane with a carbon calculator and by pledging to plant trees.

App in the Air is a travel app for frequent flyers, but the company wants to help ease the conscious of those frequent flyers who worry about the environmental impact. The app partnered with the nonprofit One Tree Planted to plant one tree for every flight that’s booked through the app. 

So far, 10,000 trees have been planted since this new feature rolled out in December. Whether or not people choose to plant a tree when they book through the app, App in the Air will plant a tree regardless. 

“Even eco-conscious people need to travel sometimes! It’s great to know that App in the Air makes it simple for travelers to plant a tree and have a positive environmental impact for nature, people and biodiversity,” Diana Chaplin, Canopy Director of One Tree Planted, said in a press release. 

Aside from planting trees for flights booked, App in the Air has integrated a carbon-offsetting widget within the app, which can give travelers an estimate on how their traveling can affect their carbon footprint based on a “carbon calculator.” Travelers that offset their carbon footprint the most receive a Carbon Neutral Traveler badge. 

“This is most definitely not about flight shaming but as frequent flyers, our community of course recognizes the environmental impact of aviation; so, we’re creating accessible tools to help flyers address long-term carbon reduction,” Bayram Annakov, AITA CEO and founder, said in a statement. 

Lilium
Lilium Aviation

Simple ways that you can offset your carbon footprint when flying include choosing a direct flight over a connecting one, flying in a newer aircraft, flying during the day, and even by sitting in the economy class. 

In a time when climate change is at the forefront of many of our conversations, people are becoming more conscious of how everyday decisions will affect the health of our plant. 

If you shop more than you fly, you could use the free TreeClicks Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox plugin to make your purchases count. For every purchase made through one of TreeClicks’ 50,000 store partnerships, the company will plant a tree.

There are other ways you can off-set your carbon footprint as well, like merely switching up your search engine. Ecosia.org plants about one tree for every 40 to 50 searches on average. 

Editors' Recommendations

Allison Matyus
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Allison Matyus is a general news reporter at Digital Trends. She covers any and all tech news, including issues around social…
Microsoft may fix the most frustrating thing about Windows updates
Windows 11 updates are moving to once a year.

Most Windows users will agree that one of the most annoying things about the operating system is the updates. While Windows Updates are necessary, they often tend to come up at the worst possible time, interrupting work and gaming sessions with persistent reminders that the system needs to reboot. Microsoft might be fixing that problem in the upcoming Windows 11 24H2 build, but it's still too early to bid farewell to those ill-timed reboots.

As spotted in the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26058, Microsoft is testing "hot patching" for some Windows 11 updates. Hot patching refers to a dynamic method of updating that often doesn't change the software version and may not even need a restart. In the context of Windows 11, it's pretty straightforward -- Windows will install the update, and you won't have to reboot your system.

Read more
Texas airport to get a 420-pound security robot
Knightscope's K5 robot.

San Antonio International Airport in Texas is deploying a 420-pound autonomous robot to bolster its security operations.

The 5-foot-4-inch K5 robot, built by California-based Knightscope, will be rolled out in the next couple of months.

Read more
Intel just boosted gaming performance by up to 155%
A tray of Intel Core Ultra CPUs.

Intel's engineers once again managed to introduce significant improvements in the latest driver update -- but this time, it's not the discrete graphics cards that received a boost. Instead, the recent patch targets integrated Intel Arc GPUs found in Intel Core Ultra processors, which are some of Intel's top CPUs for laptops. This update adds support for a couple of games, but more importantly, it boosts gaming performance by as much as 155%.

For starters, the new 31.0.101.5333 WHQL driver adds support for Last Epoch and Sea of Thieves, more precisely, the DX 12 update. This applies both to the Intel Arc A-series, meaning dedicated GPUs, and to the Core Ultra chips. Next, we have a slew of performance improvements in DX11 games.

Read more