HOLIDAY companies this week stepped up the pressure on travellers to offset the carbon emissions of their flights, with a raft of new schemes announced at the annual conference of the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta) in Marbella, Spain.
First Choice Holidays will introduce what it claims is the world’s largest carbon offset scheme run by a leisure airline from March 2007, when all customers will have the chance to pay £1 per adult (50p per child) towards the cost of offsetting the carbon emissions created by their flight.
Unlike British Airways’ existing scheme, which invites customers to “opt in” to offsetting, the First Choice scheme will be an “opt out” scheme. First Choice will match all donations pound for pound, with the company