Google Makes It Easier for Everyone to Choose More Eco-Friendly Travel

Google has some new features for its Travel offshoot to give you more control over the environmental impact of your rail and air excursions.

If you’re trying to be more eco-friendly but also like to (or need to) travel, Google Travel has been updated to make plotting a lower emission course easier. Some new travel search options have been added to Google Travel—for booking hotels, flights, and train tickets.

Now you can filter your potential travel carbon footprint when inquiring about flights and hotels. For air travel, all you have to do is search for the flights you want, then use the new Low Emissions filter to bump the lowest emission available flights to the top. You can do the same for hotels via the new “Eco-certified” filter that refines your search to only show eco-certified properties.

Travel by train is generally the least impactful form of mass transit despite emissions due to its passenger capacity (compared to airplanes), but it can be tricky to sync up schedules. Now Google will let you search for train tickets in and around specific countries like Germany, Italy, Japan, or Spain, and it will work out the necessary line transfers for you. Plug in your point of origin and destination, then let it do the rest. Once you have a route you like, it’ll provide you with a direct link to book everything you need.

Air and rail travel eco-friendly search options are up and running right now, and Google plans to expand coverage for more trains in more locations over time. It also plans to implement a similar search function for bus tickets and other travel at some point “in the near future.”