AVIS Europe has announced a major initiative to offset the carbon dioxide emissions of its entire operations.

The firm has signed up to a plan to reduce the environmental impact of its rental fleet, offering to provide carbon neutral rentals to online customers, roll out its carbon neutral initiative across Europe and reduce CO2 emissions annually from 2003. The initiative sees Avis Europe paying for forests to be planted that will consume the equivalent CO2 produced by its fleet.

After a promotional period, the firm will ask customers booking online to donate £1 to make their rental carbon neutral, based on a five-day rental covering about 500 miles.

Avis has been supporting Future Forests since 1999, when it signed up to offset all its UK emissions, and is expanding the scheme to the whole of Europe because of its success.

Mark McCafferty, chief executive officer of Avis Europe, said: 'Between our own behaviour and our customer and staff programmes we hope we can make an impact on global warming and encourage others to follow suit.'