Cathay Pacific and Dragonair are the first Asian airlines to offer a carbon offset program for their passengers and customers have the option of using cash or frequent flyer miles to pay for their offsets. You can access the “FLY greener” site at the Cathay Pacific or Dragonair Web sites and use the online calculator to determine the cost to offset your emissions based on the distance of your flight and the class of travel. For example, for a roundtrip flight between Hong Kong and New York, the suggested donation is HKD165.38 or 4,078 miles. For the same trip in business class, the suggested donation is HKD248.07 or 6,117 miles.

If you are wondering why the calculation is more for higher classes of service, the thought is that the in-flight facilities for business and first class passengers differ from those offered to coach passengers in terms of weight and space and this is taken into consideration.