Expedia: Eliminating Carbon Emissions with Innovation

Expedia is currently one of the most popular Internet-based travel agencies in the world. The services they offer range from simple ticket reservations all the way to booking complete cruise and travel packages replete with hotel and car rental bookings. Expedia’s popularity lies in their ability to be a complete travel solutions provider to consumers, as well as their availability and accessibility to customers worldwide because of their sites in various languages.

Expedia has recognized the negative effects of heavy travel on the environment and has joined the swelling ranks of corporations that have joined the green movement that has been spreading across the planet. It has also recently started to implement various ways on reducing and/or offsetting their carbon emissions.

Their biggest breakthrough in this endeavor to reduce emission levels is their successful partnership with TerraPass. TerraPass is a San Francisco-based group that provides solutions and products to companies that can assist them in offsetting their respective carbon footprints. It also uses the payments generated by its members’ purchases to fund projects that reduce the usage of fuels that have high carbon emission ratings. The operation of methane digesters and the construction of wind farms are some of those projects that TerraPass has funded through the aforementioned financial sources.

Since becoming a Green Partner of TerraPass, the company has been offsetting the carbon emissions that its clients make every time they travel, as well as generally mitigating their individual footprints on the environment. Expedia was able to negate the effects of their operations through the following initiatives:

• Recycling – Expedia has actively set out a campaign to ensure that all the paper that they use in their day to day operations are recycled to minimize the loss of trees, which counteract the effects of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. They are able to do this by installing paper waste bins to facilitate easy segregation and sorting of wastes.
• Carpooling and company-provided transportation – Expedia has started to offer transportation services to its employees at no cost while they are employed with the company. This encourages people to use their cars less often. Additionally, it has also started a Commuter Voucher program which gives a $10 gift to those employees that walk, bike, bus or carpool when they go to work.
• Employee Community Engagement – Expedia has also been making efforts to provide opportunities for its employees to engage in activities that support environmental causes.
• Complete Carbon Audit – Expedia has also unveiled its plan to conduct a full-scale carbon emission audit in 2008 for its entire operations. The data that will be generated by this audit is going to serve as a guide for Expedia to think of ways on how to sustain the reduction in carbon emissions that they’ve already achieved.

One of Expedia’s greater achievements in implementing environmental initiatives is the introduction of “green" options for its customers. Through its partnership with TerraPass, Expedia has already issued proprietary TerraPasses, which allow customers to buy tickets with varied carbon emission reduction values. The introduction of the TerraPass system into the extensive Expedia client base ensures that travel agencies can now provide opportunities for travelers to help reduce carbon emissions.

The TerraPass option for flyers is available through Expedia’s website as part of the customized options that the company offers online. The proceeds of the TerraPass purchases made through Expedia will help the former in implementing its own programs to further reduce or offset carbon emissions.

Overall, Expedia’s efforts have been successful in both offsetting their business operations’ unavoidable contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and raising the awareness of travelers as to how much they contribute to the climate problem.

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