The "Love Story" between singer Taylor Swift and NFL star Travis Kelce has been eating up column inches in recent months, and the attention on the couple reached new heights when Kelce's Kansas City Chiefs reached the Super Bowl. While some are caught up in the fairytale romance, though, others are more concerned with Swift's private jet usage.
It is understandable for one of the most famous people in the world to use a private jet, especially for trips that cannot be made without chartering a bus. But the pollution produced during short-haul flights is nonetheless especially damaging to the planet, with the gases produced from the small planes trapping heat in the atmosphere and contributing to global heating at a rate of about 10 times as much per passenger than commercial flights.
Acknowledging it was "absolutely ridiculous and just for fun," online plant database Krado published a blog post detailing how many houseplants Swift and other celebrities would need to buy in order to offset the pollution that their trips produce, using 2022 data from Yard. The data was collected before Swift's Eras Tour and notably should be perceived as info about each celebrity's private jet as a whole, rather than their own personal use. The jets are often loaned or shared, something a Swift representative told Rolling Stone was true about her Dassault 7X.
Krado used a model that took the prayer plant — which the authors credited SaveOnEnergy.com in calling the best plant for carbon dioxide reduction, at 14.4% — and stacked it up against the average CO2 produced by a private jet, leading to some startling insights.
Krado said Swift would need to buy about 30 billion houseplants to offset the toxic carbon pollution produced by her jet usage. The area those plants would cover would be roughly 1,671 square miles, which is bigger than Yosemite National Park.
Swift topped these inauspicious charts, followed by former boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. (26 billion houseplants) and music mogul Jay-Z (also 26 billion), whom Yard mentioned in its data was not the official owner of the jet in question, as it comes through a deal with Puma.
Ten celebrities in total — also including Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, and Kim Kardashian — were examined. To make up for the polluting damage all flights taken by those people cause, 186 billion houseplants would be needed, Krado said.
According to Krado, the plants would cover an area bigger than the state of Vermont. If these stars took advantage of genetically engineered plants that have as much as 30 times more air-purifying capabilities than typical houseplants, according to the French startup Neoplants, maybe they wouldn't need quite so many.
Krado cited the Transport & Environment website and the High Flyers 2023 study in detailing that private planes produce around 10 times more pollutants per passenger than commercial ones, as well as 50 times more per passenger than trains. Krado also highlighted that the High Flyers study said around 1% of the world's population is responsible for around half of all pollution created by aviation.
More of the rich and famous are coming under fire after a report by marketing agency Yard found that Taylor Swift, Floyd Mayweather and Jay-Z were among the worst celebrity polluters when it came to private jet use https://t.co/miGRPuI31W pic.twitter.com/3r7IAL7Cbl
— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) August 2, 2022
Yard's original 2022 data rundown did come with an updated caveat that casts Swift in a better light, though. While her jet usage still topped the list for total emissions, Yard found her primary jet was more fuel-efficient overall than that of some of her fellow celebrities. "The jet owned by Drake uses an average of 1,722 gallons of jet fuel per hour," Yard wrote, "whereas Taylor Swift's jet uses a much lower 347 gallons per hour."
It's also worth noting that while reducing fuel usage and using low-impact travel options are always the best ways to make a difference, Swift's reps have said that "Taylor purchased more than double the carbon credits needed to offset all tour travel" for the Eras Tour that began in 2023, per Business Insider.
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