In honor of the holiday of Tu B’Shvat, which was celebrated last week, a group of Jews currently on a Taglit-Birthright trip to Israel added a special ecologically-oriented tour of Israel.

The group comprised of participants from Argentina who are majoring in ecology and environmental studies or who take an active part in green activities. They saw the country through the lens of ecology in addition to visiting all of Israel’s main sites and cities.

A highlight of the trip was a visit to the Ariel Sharon Park (Israel’s Metropolitan Park), which is one of the biggest environmental rehabilitation projects in the world. It is unique in that this plot of land, part of which was polluted and neglected for decades, has been turned into a flourishing metropolitan park. It is referred to as the green lung of the country’s most densely populated urban region.

On top of that, the group visited the ‘Solar eTree’ at in the Sustainability Garden at Ramat Hanadiv. The eTree is powered by solar panels that produce energy directly from the sun; it produces green energy and provides a place of comfort and energy for a wide variety of services.

Given that Israel is still a very young country, “it can add a lot to see how this country is still very innovative,” said Avigail Kuperman, a Taglit tour guide, in a conversation with Arutz Sheva.

“We are living essentially in a desert, but Israel today is almost number one in the Middle East when it comes to water, desalination plants and so on. So they have a chance to talk about it in a place that suffers so much from water [shortage],” she added.