EF’s 2023 backpack: Our new sustainable travel bag is here!
Here at EF Education First, we understand the transformational power of exploring the world. Climate change, however, threatens the world and all of us who call it home, so we intend to do our part to help ensure a more sustainable future for generations to come. That’s where Hello Zero comes in—our vision and commitment to voluntarily offset all of our global carbon emissions. We’re doing this in a number of ways (you can read more about them below!) but today, we’re excited to focus on something small that packs a lot of good.
Our iconic blue backpack is now also green 💚
By working with responsible vendors and using a more sustainable fabric made from recycled plastic water bottles, we’ve built a backpack that’s perfect for exploring and helping to protect the world. Every group traveling in 2023 will receive this new sustainable travel bag (and as you can see in the pictures below, several travelers have already taken the new design out on the road). If your tour is still coming up, encourage your students to use this as their personal item. In addition to holding everything they might need for the flight, the uniform look can come in really handy when traveling through busy areas. The best part is, because this bag is made from recycled materials, your group can feel good about what they’re carrying with them out into the world.
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The backpack’s great, but how else is EF achieving carbon neutrality and negativity?
We’re so glad you asked. Hello Zero’s first step is the EF Forest Initiative, a project to create and conserve forests around the world in order to remove carbon from the atmosphere. In the EF Forest Initiative’s first years, we’ve been planting trees with Eden Reforestation Projects, a nonprofit organization that engages local communities in planting, maintaining, and guarding previously deforested areas. Eden helped us launch in Kenya, Madagascar, and Mozambique, selecting one site in each country to be an EF Forest that we sponsor and fund. Since 2021, we’ve invested in the planting of 3 million mangrove trees per year. As of April 2023, local community members had planted 6,250,135 mangrove trees on our behalf.
We selected Eden Reforestation Projects as our first EF Forest partner because of its mission to restore healthy forests while creating economic opportunities in rural communities worldwide. Eden provides fair-wage employment to local community members, hiring and training them to plant trees, build the infrastructure that supports them, and guard against illegal logging, poaching, and other threats.
Help your student travelers make a difference
In addition to the initiatives above, EF is proud to offer educational travel opportunities with a focus on sustainability. With experiences that range from Marine Conservation in the Dominican Republic to Supporting Sustainability on the Shores of Lake Titicaca to Culture and Service in Thailand, all within our Service Learning tours collection, we have something for every student who wants to get involved. (And of course, if your group chooses any of these destinations, they’ll be the perfect places to show off your new EF backpacks.)
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