Chocolate for a better world?

April 16 is set to be a very special day dedicated entirely to environmental management and protection.

More than 90 11th-grade students from the CWG will explore selected STEM labs at our university and learn through hands-on examples how aspects of environmental protection impact science and research, in other words, what EVERYONE must do to protect our environment and keep pollution as low as possible.

From 12:15 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Room 112/Building VII, the climate ambassadors from the Christian-Weise-Gymnasium in Zittau will present the global “Plant-for-the-Planet” project and sell “good chocolate.”

University staff and students are warmly invited to attend this part of the event.

What is “Plant-for-the-Planet”?

The student initiative “Plant-for-the-Planet” was founded in 2007 by 9-year-old Felix Finkbeiner. Inspired by Wangari Maathai, who planted 30 million trees in Africa over the course of 30 years, Felix articulated his vision: Children could plant one million trees in every country on Earth. And in this way, they could offset CO2 on their own, while adults just talk about it. Because every tree planted removes approximately 10 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.

The first tree is planted, and Klaus Töpfer, former German Federal Minister for the Environment and Chair of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), becomes the patron.

Felix promises UNEP that children in every country on Earth will plant one million trees. In the years that followed, Plant-for-the-Planet grew into a global movement.

Today, over 100,000 children worldwide are active in Plant-for-the-Planet.

34,000 of them are ambassadors for climate justice. These are children who share their knowledge with others at the academies and train them to become ambassadors as well. 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!

Saving the world has never tasted better.

Trees are just good. There’s only one thing they aren’t: delicious. That’s why there’s Gute Schokolade. Retailers and manufacturers forgo their profit and donate it to “Plant-for-the-Planet.” The students use these funds to plant so many trees that the production of every bar is completely climate-neutral. But that’s not its only superpower: The chocolate is also fair-trade, so that cocoa farmers get their well-deserved share. And of course, it’s especially chocolatey and delicious!

The Story of Good Chocolate

Of course, kids love to eat chocolate. Who doesn’t? But the production of a standard 100-gram bar generates 300 grams 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 market—just as children would make any product: fairly traded and climate-neutral.

First, they found a manufacturer of excellent Swiss chocolate that is helping out and waiving its profit: Chocolats Halba. With Pur Projet, they had experts on hand who work with the cocoa farmers to grow precious woods. This way, the farmers can be fairly compensated according to Fairtrade standards and later further improve their families’ incomes by selling the wood. The sustainable cultivation of the wood also offsets the CO2 emissions generated during chocolate production. Because this chocolate does so much good, it was named “Die Gute Schokolade” (The Good Chocolate). It didn’t take long to convince the first retailers to add the chocolate to their product lines. To date, over 2 million bars have been sold.

€0.20 from every bar sold goes to Plant-for-the-Planet, and for every 5 bars sold, a tree is planted. Tomorrow, the Zittauer Plant-for-the-Planet Climate Ambassadors will be selling their chocolate here at our university.

Please join us in supporting our children’s wonderful commitment!