The Change Chocolate is a fairtrade product by the children’s and youth initiative Plant-for-the-Planet. And it lives up to its name: Every piece of the chocolate changes something to good: from planting new trees to paying fair wages. 9 million bars have already been sold, which means 2 million new trees have been planted. The chocolate’s shows what exactly each individual piece is good for.

The name Change Chocolate is a promise: here, literally every single piece creates a positive change – from new trees to fair wages. The design of the Change Chocolate displays at a glance what percentage of the selling price is distributed into which project.

Invented by Children:
The Most Successful Fair Trade Chocolate of All Times

The history of the Change Chocolate shows that the children from Plant-for-the-Planet do not surrender. In 2011, 13-year-old Felix Finkbeiner reached a low point in his commitment. At that time he spoke at a meeting in front of 350 chocolate producers from around the world. He asked the children’s favorite industry to donate 0.01 percent of their turnover to Plant-for-the-Planet as a “Future Fee”. In other words, one euro per ton of the chocolate luxury product. Not a single one answered. Saying “this is shocking,” Felix left the stage in tears.

Anger became courage – and thus, in 2012 the children from Plant-for-the-Planet introduced their own chocolate onto the market. The market launch of the Change Chocolate was the most successful product launch of a fair trade chocolate of all time. It is produced in the same manner that the children envisage every product: fair trade certified and climate neutral.

Since 2007, the children’s and youth initiative Plant-for-the-Planet has been planting trees to fight the climate crisis. With the Change Chocolate, the children have found a delicious way for everyone to fight for a better future. For every five bars of chocolate sold, they plant a tree in their own forest area in Campeche, Mexico.

This is made possible by dealers and manufacturers who renounce their profits. To date, more than 2 million trees have been planted by selling the chocolate. Afforestation is the cheapest and easiest way for humanity to succeed in slowing down global warming. Because trees absorb the greenhouse gas CO2 from the air, store the carbon in their wood and produce oxygen.

But the Change Chocolate does not only do something against the climate crisis, but many more good things. This is immediately evident in the design of the chocolate: Differently sized pieces show at a glance how much of the sales price go to which projects.

In addition to 20% for new trees, 21% go directly to the producers of the ingredients as fair payment. Other pieces enable the children to host academies where they train each other as climate justice ambassadors or to use milk from local farmers to avoid unnecessary CO2 caused by transport. Another 18% go to climate neutral production, which is achieved by measures such as afforestation projects on the cocoa plantations – in addition to the new trees planted by Plant-for-the-Planet.

It was an experience that taught us children a lot about chocolate. That it takes 300 grams of CO2 to produce 100 grams of chocolate. And that most of the children of the roughly 2 million cocoa farmers have to work in the fields instead of going to school because only a tiny fraction of the price of chocolate goes to the cocoa farmers.

We have our Change Chocolate produced the way we think everything in the world should be made- as climate neutral, fair trade products. The farmers earn enough from selling the cocoa beans to send their children to school. We also offset the carbon emission because the farmers plant precious wood among their trees.

The cocoa farmers can sell the precious wood in 20 years’ time to manufacture furniture, further increasing the family income and because they grow both cocoa tress and precious wood, their livelihoods no longer depend entirely on the price of cocoa. Change Chocolate thus meets fair trade criteria twice. The letter “C” in CO2 stays in the precious wood as long as the trees are growing and later in the produced furniture. Besides planting precious wood among farmers’ cocoa trees, for every three bars of organic Change Chocolate sold( and for every five bars of regular change chocolate), Plant-for-the-planet also pledge to plant one more tree on the foundation’s own land in Campeche, Mexico. That makes our Change Chocolate twice as Climate-neutral, too.

We call our chocolate “Die Gute Schokolade”  (literally “The Good Chocolate”) in the German speaking area and “Change Chocolate” worldwide.

Saving the world has never been so mouth-watering.

Image Courtesy- Plant-for-the-Planet.

Follow this link to know more about Plant-for-the-Planet Initiative-

https://www.plant-for-the-planet.org/en/home