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The purpose of this article is to highlight the hypocrisy of an agenda that prioritizes reducing carbon emissions through service and education, yet requires four airplane journeys to achieve. This article does not aim to criticize acts of kindness and concern, but rather to make students at INTL aware that it is not necessary to travel five thousand miles to a third world country to make a difference.
The week before the February break, the ninth and tenth graders went on a week-long educational trip to Costa Rica. The stated purpose of this trip was to, first and foremost, help remote Costa Rican communities improve their local economies and lessen their environmental impact by supporting their transition from conventional farming to organic farming. It also aimed to provide students with an opportunity to learn about the daily lives of those in these communities and how their tiny habits have large effects on the planet.
The group of students almost immediately went on a long bus ride to the small town of Providencia en Dota, of around 250 residents. The town's main source of income derives from coffee farming. While most of the occupants of the town practice conventional means of coffee farming, a growing movement pushing for the adoption of organic farming techniques, Green Communities, exists within the town as well. After arriving in Providencia, the 18 students on the trip began working for around three hours per day for three days fertilizing coffee trees with organic fertilizer and helping in the construction of new greenhouses.
A single coffee plant can produce between one and two pounds of coffee per harvest. This means that for each one kilogram bag of coffee, it takes around 1.5 trees to produce per harvest. Growing each kilogram of coffee by conventional means will produce 15.33 kg of carbon dioxide (Maslin and Nab). On this service trip to Costa Rica, volunteers helped fertilize, using organic fertilizer, around 400 trees. Assuming that the carbon cost of producing one kilo of organic coffee is nothing at all, which it likely is not due to transportation, if not the process itself, then volunteers prevented 6.1 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. For reference, one imperial ton is equivalent to 2240 lbs.
Although it appears that students at INTL made a very big difference in terms of creating a greener and more sustainable planet, it is important to remember that it took four different flights to get to Costa Rica and go home. 18 people plus 5 supervisors means that there were a total of 23 passengers. 23 passengers on these flights would produce 40.4 tons of carbon dioxide. This means that it took them at least 40.4 tons (likely even more, because of buses) to prevent the production of 6.1 tons. This, honestly, does not seem like a particularly environmentally friendly ratio.
It could be forgiven if the 6.1 tons was entirely matched by the transportation carbon costs, since the education gained could be valuable in helping all participants reduce their carbon footprint in the future, but this near 20:3 ratio seems rather excessive for a trip so focused on eco-friendly education.
While the experience was remarkable for almost every student that participated in the trip, it is evident that the trip was never about “making a difference” in terms of the environment, but rather that the carbon dioxide benefits were a positive byproduct of the true intent of the trip: doing service abroad that is meaningful to local populations. Of course, we must consider the educational value of this trip. Students were made aware of habits and knowledge about themselves and about the state of the world that most likely had a significant effect on the way they act. The topics discussed on this trip varied from the coffee industry all the way to water consumption. This knowledge and the subsequent changes that these students might make once they return home could have a substantial impact on their individual carbon footprints. It must be acknowledged that there are invisible costs to seemingly everyday actions, which might lead one to fail to consider the negative impact they might cause, even in the pursuit of something good.
One supervisor in particular noticed the irony in this trip. The High School English Language & Literature Teacher, Ms. Lee said after returning home that the “trip was very rewarding on a personal level. However, I couldn’t ignore the irony of having to fly eighteen students and three teachers down to Costa Rica to learn about living sustainably.” Ms. Lee found herself questioning whether her “work in the biofábrica really outweighs the irony of having to fly thousands of miles.
This, of course, begs the question of whether the school should continue to travel to Costa Rica every year.
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