"Plant-for-the-Planet" at HSZG: Ambassadors for climate justice from Christian-Weise-Gymnasium introduce themselves.
April 16 is set to be a very special day dedicated to environmental management and protection.
Over 90 grade 11 students from the CWG will explore selected STEM laboratories at our university and experience practical examples of how aspects of environmental protection affect science and research, i.e. what EVERYONE has to do to protect our environment and keep pollution to a minimum.
At 12:15 to 13:00, the climate ambassadors from Christian-Weise-Gymnasium Zittau will present the global "Plant-for-the-Planet" project in Room 112/House VII and sell the "good chocolate".
University staff and students are cordially invited to this part of the event.
The Plant-for-the-Planet student initiative was founded in 2007 by 9-year-old Felix Finkbeiner. Inspired by Wangari Maathai, who planted 30 million trees in Africa in 30 years, Felix formulated his vision: children could plant one million trees in every country in the world. And thus offset CO2 emissions on their own while the adults just talk about it. Because every tree planted removes around 10 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere every year.
The first tree is planted and Klaus Töpfer, former Federal Minister for the Environment and Chairman of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), becomes patron.
Felix promises the UNEP that the children will plant one million trees in every country in the world. In the years that followed, Plant-for-the-Planet developed into a worldwide movement.
34,000 of them are ambassadors for climate justice. These are children who pass on their knowledge to others at the academies and also train them to become ambassadors. In this way, Plant-for-the-Planet reaches as many children as possible and motivates them to take action for their future. A total of 13,015,552,910 trees have already been planted!
Trees are great. But there's one thing they're not: delicious. That's why there's good chocolate. Retailers and manufacturers forgo their profits and donate them to "Plant-for-the-Planet". The students plant so many trees that the production of each bar is completely climate-neutral. But that's not their only superpower: the chocolate is also fairly traded, so that the cocoa farmers also get their fair share. And, of course, it is particularly chocolatey and delicious!
Of course children love to eat chocolate. Who doesn't? But the production of a normal 100g bar produces 300g of harmful CO2. The farmers who grow the cocoa beans are often not paid fairly for their work. Their children have to help with the harvest instead of going to school like we do. So the children came up with the idea of bringing their own chocolate to the market. Just as children would make any product: fairly traded and climate-neutral.
First, they found a manufacturer of excellent Swiss chocolate that helps and gives up its profits: Chocolats Halba. With Pur Projet, they had experts on hand who cultivate precious woods together with the cocoa farmers. This enables the farmers to be paid fairly in accordance with Fairtrade standards and later improve their families' income by selling the wood. The sustainable cultivation of the wood also offsets the CO2 emissions generated during the production of the chocolate. Because this chocolate does so much good, it was named "The Good Chocolate". The first retailers were soon convinced to include the chocolate in their range. Today, over 2 million bars have already been sold.
0.20 of every bar sold goes to Plant-for-the-Planet and a tree is planted for every 5 bars sold. Tomorrow, the Zittau Plant-for-the-Planet climate ambassadors will be selling their chocolate at the university.
Support the great commitment of our children!
