Eco-friendly is probably not the first thing you think of when you think of cruises, but Sweet co-founder and CEO Shannon Wentworth thinks it should be.

So when the former Care2 editor-in-chief started her lesbian travel company, she made sure that it was committed to minimizing the impact of its vacations as well as its business operations on the environment.

Sweet eliminates all the carbon it creates, including air, sea and car travel, with donations to the CarbonFund.org. The carbon-offset company lets you choose the clean energy or air cleaning project you’d like your dollars to support. Sweet chose to contribute to a massive tree planting effort along the banks of the Tensas River in Louisiana–significant because its first cruise departs from New Orleans.

The company is also focused on ecotourism and voluntourism. Before the inaugural cruise departs in November 2009, a group of volunteers from Sweet will participate in Bayou Rebirth–spending about four hours replanting 10,000 plants and learning about the fragile ecosystem.

“It’s going to make a big difference,” Wentworth says. “Our goal is to leave the world a better place than we found it.”