May 3, 2024
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EF Responsible Supplier Guidelines
We strive to positively impact people, communities, and the planet. These guidelines outline our high-level legal, ethical, environmental, and professional minimum standards within our organization and among our vendors and suppliers.
Responsible Supplier Guidelines PDF
This is the story of how a simple backpack made a big impact — and how we leveraged our global reach to repurpose millions of plastic water bottles into thousands of EF backpacks for students and travelers.
The EF backpack’s journey toward sustainability started by collaborating with vendors and suppliers to integrate sustainable values into new backpack designs and production standards. In 2023, a trial began on a new EF backpack made from post-consumer plastic water bottles. The first order of new backpacks by EF Educational Tours diverted over 1.9 million plastic water bottles from landfills. The success of this trial quickly triggered a ripple effect as other EF businesses started their initiatives:
• EF High School Exchange Year completely overhauled its student materials to reduce waste and increase longevity, making sustainability a core criterion.
• For 2024, EF Academy started its sustainable backpack journey with a large-scale redesign project.
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EF High School Year redesigned their entire line of student materials with sustainability and longevity in mind.
“Acknowledging the significance of every decision we make for our planet, we aim to provide our students and staff with items that are reusable, cherished, and instill a sense of pride — a commitment to lasting use over the years.”
To date, over four million post-consumer plastic water bottles have been repurposed into iconic EF backpacks with millions more expected. And the humble backpack’s journey toward sustainable impact doesn’t end there. Beyond the use of recycled materials in construction, these backpacks are designed with versatility in mind and can be used across EF’s many businesses. This reduces wasteful overruns, extending their shelf life and increasing their potential use for years to come.
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Working with suppliers that adopt best practices in sustainability helps us accelerate progress toward a more sustainable future. Our latest backpacks have been created with our long-term partner, MaCher. A certified B Corporation, they earned the distinction by meeting rigorous social and environmental standards, balancing the impact on people and the planet alongside generating profits. MaCher specializes in helping organizations like ours improve the environmental impact of the materials we create.
“For collective impact, sustainability must be a team effort, not just inside the business, but also throughout the supply chain,” says Derek Hydron, CEO of MaCher. “EF’s iconic backpack has created a snowball effect inside EF that has been inspiring as they take steps to accelerate EF’s progress on sustainability.”
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post-consumer plastic bottles made into EF backpacks
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