Footprints.

I'm off the Mexican food. I'm also off the pea and ham soup, not to mention legumes as a whole. Yes I'm considering my emissions output as the talk of carbon footprints and taxes overtake traffic and real estate water cooler talk in Sydney. I work in the travel industry and know the challenges, not the least pertaining to airline traffic and the perceptions regarding carbon emissions. Interestingly enough, airlines have not been targeted by the government in the top 500 polluters list.

So what are the facts regarding aviation emissions and who are the airlines not doing the right thing, or at least attempting to find solutions? Brighter Planet a carbon accounting and offset firm has studied more than 9 billion passenger departures to try and target the good, the bad and the truly ugly in energy efficiency per passenger mileage. Factoring in fuel economy, seat availability and distances travelled for more than 130 million flights over the last decade they have found the most efficient airlines to travel.

Surprises are always fun and in this case it involves one of my favourite subjects to write about, international carrier Ryan Air, who along with Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific topped the rankings as the most carbon efficient airlines globally, while others like SAS, Lufthansa and Swiss filled out the bottom ranks. Guess you don't have to pay top dollar to save the planet, according to Michael O'Leary of Ryan Air. Ranking first or second for efficiency in load factor and seating density gives Ryan Air a huge advantage over its rivals. Along with more efficient and newer aircraft Ryan Air are the benchmark to gaining the smallest airline footprint or skyprint.

Those efficiencies can mean a lot of difference to CO2 emissions if we compare two airlines across the same route from LA to New York where JetBlue with smaller aircraft and better load factors is three times more efficient than Qantas. This brings in arguments for corporations often targeted with reducing their own carbon footprint, where simple changes to flying more efficient airlines within corporate monetary guidelines can gain reductions of up to 40% in emissions. By studying two large US companies over 300,000 flights to come up with the 40% reduction using carbon efficient airlines, Brighter Planet made the point even more understandable when they equated the reduction to the equivalent of eliminating 74,000 flights.

So what are you or your company doing about this dreaded footprint? Is it a political football being kicked around? Do companies understand or even care about their footprint? Do you? Who is right, Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott, or is the truth hidden somewhere in all the political hype? The biggest problems seem to be understanding and agreement on measurements and how to accurately predict what your footprint will be and how you can best influence it without having to go off your favourite bean burrito.

The carbon tax issue causing so much discussion at the moment, hinges around understanding and enunciation of a problem centered around marketing and selling the resolution. We all want to save the polar bears but on an individual basis it seems very difficult to make a difference or even to understand the problem. When was the last time someone showed you what a ton of CO2 looked like and how it was produced by you or any of the 500 top polluters? How does the carbon trading scheme work? Can't we find a more efficient way to stop industries polluting, other than taxing or fining them? Can't we just plant a bazillion trees to suck up all of that CO2?

If we can't get simple answers to those questions, how are we expected to enjoy our Mexican food?