DS Smith in Germany supports a charitable organisation for Christmas instead of giving customers presents. This year’s donation of €10,000 went to the Schutzgemeinschaft Deutscher Wald (SDW) and its nationwide educational project. As part of an interactive rally, school classes discover forest products and learn how sustainable consumption can protect forest resources worldwide. Half of the donation is funded by the DS Smith Charitable Foundation.
The rally is an official project of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. The SDW forest educators are on the road at schools all over Germany. As part of the programme, children and young people in grades 3 to 7 deal with different questions such as what football, toilet paper and chocolate have to do with the forest. From which continents do the forest raw materials in our everyday products originate and, above all, how does the consumers behaviour affect the climate and the environment? The pupils learn to see their own actions in a larger context. Complex inter-relationships such as the global transport of forest products, consumer behaviour and sustainable forest use are vividly worked out. They learn how important the worldwide protection of the forest is for the climate and receive impulses on how they can effectively contribute to the protection of the environment and the reduction of greenhouse gases with their lifestyle.
Furthermore, DS Smith has been involved in ecological and social projects for years. This summer, when fast and unbureaucratic help was needed during the devastating flood disaster in Germany, DS Smith Germany supported the people in the heavily affected district of Ahrweiler with emergency aid of €10,000.
