Happy Earth Day, friends! Zappos will be celebrating Earth Day this Wednesday by hosting our second annual Earth Day Event at our Henderson campus. In preparation for the event, we asked Zappos parents to enter their kids into our first Children’s Art Contest with a theme of, “How I care for the planet.”

We really want to highlight and recognize these kids for doing such an amazing job! Our kids are so important to us and are the reasons why we’re trying to leave the planet a better place, so that they can enjoy it the way we did. They are also the ones who will most likely solve many of the planet’s environmental challenges. After receiving the art entries, it was awesome to see how much our kids know about the planet and how to care for it! Show of hands: Did your child teach you and your family how to recycle?! Yep, ours too!

We’re so proud of all the kiddos that participated!! Below are the winners of the first Children’s Art Contest - Earth Day 2013. Each winner received a fabulous eco-friendly gift basket to help them continue to care for the planet.

Winners from ages 5 and under:

Winners from ages 6-10:

Winners from ages 11-14:

Check out more awesome news from LEAF on Twitter: @ZapposLEAF and on Instagram: #zappos_leaf

As part of LEAF’s initiative to make Zappos a more environmentally friendly workplace, we hosted an Earth Day event for our employees on Tuesday, April 17th. We asked several local and non-local vendors to participate by spreading awareness about how easy and fun it is to become eco-friendly, and wow, did our vendors surely step up to the plate! Earth Day was such a success that we’ve decided to make this an annual event with the goal to make each year even better than the previous!

When we first reached out to our vendors, their responses were overwhelming! They were thrilled to hear the Zappos was starting its journey to become environmentally friendly, and they were even more excited to be a part of it. The vendors that attended our event included: KEEN, prAna, Patagonia, Whole Foods, Vegas Roots Community Gardens, Lunas Recycling, Sierra Nevada, BottleHood, Springs Preserve, Friends of Nevada Wilderness, Southwest Gas, and RTC.

prAna did something special for all Zappos employees that deserves a special shout out. Not only did they showcase their use of sustainable materials in their products, demonstrated how they’ve eliminated poly bags in their warehouse, and discussed their initiatives with clean energy; they surprised us by offsetting all of our Las Vegas employees’ carbon emissions! This means that 1,300 of us will be carbon neutral for the entire month of April!* Thank you prAna for caring so much about the environment and truly WOWing all of us!

Not all of our Earth Day vendors could make a physical appearance at Zappos HQ. However, they still showed their support for our event and sent out information about their eco-friendly products and sustainable initiatives, prizes for us to raffle off, and even coupons specifically made for our employees. These vendors included: ChicoBags, EcoLunchBoxes, Klean Kanteen, Semilla, People Towels, Vessel Drinkware, and Haiku Bags. 

One of our goals for our first annual Zappos Earth Day was to promote an eco-friendly change in the daily habits of at least one employee. With the help of our vendors that provided and demonstrated eco-friendly options and initiatives to our employees, I believe the event successfully achieved its goal! The immense turnout of curious Zappos employees also helped promote more green awareness. We really could not have pulled this event off without the help of all of our amazing vendors –THANK YOU!

That being said, it is my personal goal to make next year’s Zappos Earth Day even more successful!

*1,300 individual offsets would be the same as 117 cars removed from the road for a year, or carbon sequestered by 128 acres of trees, or removing the harmful effects from extracting 1392 barrels of oil.

This Sunday, the world celebrates Earth Day, a time to renew our commitment to protecting our planet’s natural resources and the environment.

As an ode to Mother Nature, we want to share just some of our favorite Earth-friendly picks. Made of sustainable, recycled or organic materials, these products are a step in the right direction to being more environmentally conscious—and that’s always a beautiful thing!

1. Volcom V.Co Meadow Tank Dress, 2. Patagonia Summertime Dress, 3. The North Face Papenoo Woven Top, 4.Marmot Women's Pop Tee, 5. Patagonia Three Trees Shirt, 6. Keen BrooklynII Travel Bag, 7. NVEY Eco Lip Color , 8. Timberland Earthkeepers Katama Strappy Sandals , 8. Timberland Earthkeepers Hookset Chukka

Here at Zappos HQ, we have a group of eco-minded employees who banded together to form L.E.A.F (Leading Environmental Awareness for the Future) , a group committed to making Zappos a more environmentally-conscious company. To learn more about L.E.A.F. and their eco-focused efforts year round, click HERE.

One of the best things about living in Las Vegas is beautiful Red Rock Canyon  right in our backyard. This past weekend, some of us LEAFers went on a hike and cleaned  up the trail along the way. The weather was perfect, the trail was empty, and we couldn't have asked for better company. One of our LEAFers, Amelia, even brought her two pups along for the day. We went back as far as we could before the trail got a little questionable, found our way down to the creek running partially alongside the trail, and enjoyed ourselves a nice little snack!  

Although this event may not be what you consider environmental stewardship, it still provided some important lessons about how to be more environmentally aware. Spending your time outdoors is much better for the environment by reducing the amount of electricity we use and carbon emissions we produce. We also learned how to respect the outdoors by cleaning up after our dogs, not spitting our seeds or shells onto the ground, and not to pick anything up that is native to the area.  Oh, and cigarettes are not biodegradable, (contrary to what some people may think!). All these things will help protect the beautiful outdoors. We were able to provide a small service to the land by picking up any waste we found along the way. Surprisingly, there wasn't much! But, we still accumulated a small amount of cigarette butts and pistachios shells.

L.E.A.F.'s next event will be hosted at Zappos, specifically for our Zappos employees, on April 17. It will be Zappos' first ever Earth Day event! We have partnered with KEEN in the past to observe Earth Day, but we have never celebrated it on campus before and we are super excited for it! Our main goal for Earth Day is to help spread environmental awareness at Zappos through demonstrations by local and non-local vendors who actively support eco-friendly behavior. If we could change the daily behaviors of just one of our employees by showing them how to recycle properly, helping them choose sustainable food choices, or telling them where to buy eco-friendly products, the event will be a success!

L.E.A.F. is planning to participate in a few other events in the upcoming months, such as: Plant a Tree for Arbor Day on April 27 at UNLV and the Solar Festival on June 21 at the Henderson Events Plaza. While these aren't L.E.A.F. sponsored events, we know how important it is for us to support our community along their sustainable paths!

Stay tuned for additional events and check out the L.E.A.F.  Facebook page!

A few months ago, L.E.A.F. (Leading Environmental Awareness for the Future) was featured on the Zappos blogs when we hosted our first ever Zappos Recycles Day. Since then, L.E.A.F.’s been pretty busy trying to transform Zappos into a greener company!

L.E.A.F.’s mission is to effectively and efficiently reduce Zappos’ impact on the environment. We have already implemented a new recycling program to fit our employee’s needs; created a mug raffle to encourage use of reusable cups; and added green material to our library to help employees promote sustainability. We are planning an awesome Zappos Earth Day to spread awareness to our employees about how easy it is to make greener decisions daily. Also, we are currently working on a pretty extensive event calendar to show our community support.

L.E.A.F. is an employee-grown group led by Danielle and supported by Liz, Elyse and about 30 other Zapponians. The greatest part about our group members, whom we call LEAFERS, is that they find time to support L.E.A.F.’s initiatives alongside their full-time jobs because they truly care about help growing Zappos into a more environmentally friendly company. We’ve come a long way in about 8 months and plan to go even further!

Over the next few months, we plan to make some big changes and will be keeping everyone updated on what we’re up to, internally and out in the community! Stay tuned!

If you would like to contact L.E.A.F., please email leaf@zappos.com.

With Earth Day being tomorrow and this entire week devoted to Earth Week, we think it’s important to remember that although there’s a specific week, day, and even hour dedicated to Mother Earth, we really ought to be celebrating our planet on a daily basis.

In honor of Earth Week, we thought we’d shine the spotlight (an eco-friendly compact fluorescent lightbulb spotlight, of course!) on some of our favorite earth-friendly products. They not only look good, they make you feel good about doing your part in supporting more eco-friendly manufacturing practices and materials.  

1.       Matt & Nat Stardust Elm tote

2.       Patagonia Men’s Live Simply™ Guitar T-Shirt

3.       Keen Coronado sneakers

4.       Simple Flipee Eco-Friendly Certified Nubuck

5.       Marmot Women’s Mandala Tee

6.       Horny Toad Cliff Shorts

7.       Simple Carport- Elastic sneakers

8.       NVEY Eco Cosmetics Advanced Care Lip Color

What little things do you do regularly to be kinder to the planet? Got any earth-friendly tips? Leave a comment below!

To check out even more eco-friendly clothes, shoes, beauty and accessories, go to the Zappos Eco-Friendly page.