Nairobi, 16 July 2020 – UN-Habitat’s Urban Basic Services Section would like to thank all applicants around the world who submitted their innovative educational activities on waste management for children and youth. The submissions reflect applicants’ grand efforts in promoting people’s behavioural change towards better waste and resource management.

10 submissions for pre- and primary schools, 3 for higher education, and 6 for both educational levels have been selected, based on their innovative and educational character. Further criteria included if the activity is replicable and/or scalable, and how it supports the 5Rs and other waste /resource management concepts. As we want to share all selected submissions, please find an overview in the table below.

Background of Waste Wise Education

UN-Habitat launched two initiatives: African Clean Cities Platform (ACCP) and Waste Wise Cities (WWC), to tackle municipal waste management issues. ACCP and WWC are regional and global waste management initiatives respectively, focusing on 4 key action areas: Waste Data & Monitoring; Knowledge & Good Practices Sharing; Advocacy & Education; Project Finance & Bankability Support.

ACCP and WWCC have been looking at the educational dimension of waste management, wishing to mainstream acquisition of waste literacy at pre-primary and primary schools as well as higher education institutions. UN-Habitat believes that innovative educational activities foster a 5Rs culture (Rethink, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and shape the environmental consciousness of children and youth.

Best Innovative Practices on Waste Education

(Tabled according to alphabetical order per each education level)

For pre- and primary school 

Name of Activity

Summary of Activity

5Rs and other concepts

Location

Children’s Day by Waste Warriors Corbett

Children’s day is Waste Warriors Corbett’s signature awareness programme designed for school students. Each session lasts 2 to 2.5 hours and includes educational learning, games & craft, all focusing on understanding waste as a resource. The sessions will normally end with a clean-up of the area and a group photo. After repeated sessions with over 75 schools across multiple years,  Guidebook to Children’s Day with Waste Warriors – a comprehensive book on the activities for children’s practice-based learnings about basic waste management, was designed.

Reduce

Reuse

Recycle

 

India

Competition of trash bin painting

This competition was conducted as part of a municipal environmental education programme. Students paint waste bins and look for a public space to put them, focussing especially on places where littering is observed. During the activity, students realized how much waste is thrown in the environment. Additionally, the activity successfully mobilised the community by disseminating videos on art works from 7 schools through local TV shows and Facebook, as well as by asking people to vote for their selection. Through this activity, people realized the importance of throwing waste into bins. Furthermore, it reduced the destruction of public trash bins.

Disposal Reuse

 

Orange walk, Belize

Ecology Note – Towards a Clean, Green and Beautiful Bhutan – by The IGES Centre Collaborating with UNEP on Environmental Technologies (CCET), UNEP IETC and the National Environmental Commission (NEC) of Bhutan

This environmental education tool was developed based on the local context of Bhutan including daily customs, lifestyles, and Gross National Happiness (GNH). The booklet supports students’ deep understanding on sustainable waste and resource management through activities such as exploration, discussion, and presentation. The Teacher’s Guide accompanying the booklet also provides procedures and tips to enhance the activities.

Rethink

Refuse

Reduce

Reuse Recycle

Bhutan

ECO-school programme by Kiambu County Government

Kiambu County introduced Eco-Schools programme as sustainable solution to improve the level of environmental management in schools as well as to instil a culture of environmental conservation and management in the young population. Through the holistic and participatory approach, and a combination of learning and action, Eco-school corresponds to the County’s Zero Waste initiative. The program also collaborates with business partners and the local community.

Rethink

Refuse

Reduce

Reuse Recycle

Kiambu, Kenya

Environment Picture Diary in Yokohama, Japan and Africa by Yokohama City Recycle Resources Association & JICA

This initiative has been open for participation for primary students since 2000. Every year, the best drawings with diary about their environmental activities in daily life are selected from around 20,000 entries and exhibited. As part of the African Clean Cities Platform's activities, 300 selected works by African children were exhibited at the venue of the 7th Tokyo International Conference on African Development and at a gallery in Yokohama City in 2019. Companies and Town Development Councils have realized some of the ideas from the children’s picture diaries. Furthermore, a tailored programme, placing JICA Volunteers in African countries, is providing a new learning opportunity not only for children, but also for teachers, families, and local communities.

Rethink

Refuse

Reduce

Reuse Recycle

Japan, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia

Future leaders Engagés

This project aims to train a future generation that is aware of and concerned about the environment, particularly waste management, a generation that will have the knowledge, skills, mindset, motivation and sense of commitment to work individually or collectively to solve current problems and prevent them from arising again through regular environmental classroom sessions reinforced by audio-visual activities, drawing competitions, video games, etc.

Rethink

Refuse

Reduce

Reuse Recycle

Benin

Programme d'éducation des élèves de la Région de Saint-Louis du Sénégal à la gestion des déchets et à l'amélioration du cadre de vie by L’ONG le PARTENARIAT en collaboration avec Sénégal Education Au Développement (SEN-EAD) et DIAPALANTE

This program systematically involves a set of actors following a well-established approach: (1) Introduction to the problems of waste, its pollution and its management provided by the Senegal Education Development Association (SEN-EAD) for teachers and children of a school. (2) Discovery by the students of the waste sector. (3) Activities carried out by SEN-EAD and by the teachers of the school based on active pedagogy from a diagnosis (Rethink), the students set up new activities (Refuse), relating to waste management  (Reduce), to water management and to the environment where they are responsible (constitution of brigades, collection, sorting and classification of waste, etc.).

Rethink

Refuse

Reduce

Reuse Recycle

Saint-Louis, Senegal

Project Shule-PET Take Back Program by Wildlife Clubs of Kenya (WCK) & Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM)

The four months programme was launched at Moi Avenue Primary School in Nairobi City on  February 1st 2019 with the aim of giving an opportunity to children and teachers to learn and find innovative solutions to the PET plastic bottles disposal problem in Nairobi City. The program managed to reach out and sensitize 22,852 school children and 62 teachers from 19 schools in Nairobi City about PET plastic bottles. By March 2020 a total of 1,625 kilograms of plastics had been collected for recycling at a factory by the 19 schools. An App was later designed and incorporated in the project to enhance learning and collection of plastics in the school. Schools have been able to sustain the project activities with wildlife clubs.

 

Nairobi, Kenya

Swachhta ki Pathshala by Waste Warriors Society

This program aims towards sensitizing students to their environment through hands-on and thought-provoking activities The six months long program follows the hybrid model of Training of Teachers model with direct beneficiaries and runs parallelly in the educational ecosystem to raise awareness in educators and students for behavioural change. One of the main objectives of the program is to ensure schools have an effective, sustainable, and affordable waste management system. The program structure includes 1) Principal meet 2) Teachers Training 3) Pre Impact Assessment 4) Awareness raising sessions and activities 4) Waste Management setup 5) Post Impact Assessment 6) Testimonials 7) Felicitations.

Reuse, reduce, recycle

India

Zero Waste at Schools (ZWAS) program and Toolkit for Waste Management Education by Clean up Nepal

Zero Waste at Schools is an awareness-based school program which was launched to reduce the amount of waste produced and disposed of by schools. The overall goal of the program is to raise awareness in students, teachers, and staff for waste management and how they can responsibly manage waste. This program has also developed a Zero Waste at Schools toolkit on waste management education to complement the schools’ existing curriculum and to enrich the children with knowledge and practice of sustainable waste management.

Reduce Reuse Recycle

Kathmandu, Nepal

For higher education

Name of Activity

Summary of Activity

5Rs

Location

Environmental Behaviour leaders by Qutoof Professional Development

The main objective of this program is to organize a group of environment leaders. The program wakes youth's interest in the environment and in leading the change in their community through a participatory approach, learning by doing, and skill development.  The two basic components are; “learn" - Youth engage in activities of planning,  designing action, maintaining, protecting, and restoring the health of the environment; and “Serve" – Youth have an opportunity for self–reflection on their behaviour towards waste management, and  apply solutions they have learnt to address identified environmental problems in their community.

Educating leaders on SWM

Jordan

Hand-me-down Fresh Start by Single Mothers Association of Kenya (SMAK)

SMAK contributes to reducing clothes being dumped in Nairobi river from Gikomba second-hand market, because they remain unsold. Instead, those clothes are used for dress-making and patch-wok training for teenage girls in order to receive a certification from the National Industrial Training Authority (NITA) after their vocational training. This programme is not only reducing the amount of dumped clothes destroying the diversity in Nairobi river, but also empowering young ladies to be more than mere home-makers, by becoming tailors.  

Reuse

Nairobi, Kenya

NorthBay At Home: Food 101 for Families by NorthBay Education Inc.

This program addresses the problem of food waste in the USA, where an estimated 40% of food grown is wasted. In the lesson Food 101 For Families, youth watch an engaging video featuring a NorthBay educator to learn about the issue. The educator prompts them to download a journal where they draw a picture to illustrate all the people, processes and energy invested in one food item they recently consumed. Next, they track their families’ food waste for one week. After they record and share their findings, they develop an action plan. Youth celebrate and share actions on social media, #NorthBayEducation.

Reduce

Energy

Maryland, U.S.A

 

For both

Name of Activity

Summary of Activity

5Rs

 

Amal’s Green School Program by Amal for Life

The program reaches out to progressive public and private schools and universities with the aim to raise awareness, change the outlook and bring about behaviour change in regards to the environment, hygiene and waste management for cleaner and greener cities in Pakistan. It also provides green school certification. Students are encouraged to continue segregation and cleaning activities by earning green credits which is a kind of green currency awarded to schools for their green actions. The green credit can be exchanged with recyclable products made by skilled woman.

Reduce Reuse

Recycle

Green activities

Islamabad, Pakistan

AUTOCOLES by BASURAMA

Autocoles was born from the idea of merging three interrelated aspects: education through practice, the creative reuse of materials using art as a work tool, and social and spatial transformation. This initiative involves building play and meeting spaces or improving existing ones, using surplus materials from the centre itself or from local companies or institutions. It is also proposed self-construction with minimum resources and reused materials. It further provides students a critical view on the processes of production and consumption.

Reuse

Madrid, Spain

Blue Schools Kit - An approach for healthy and environmentally friendly schools and children by Swiss Water & Sanitation Consortium (SWSC) in collaboration with Eawag

Blue School Kit was developed based on the concept pioneered by the International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance. The Blue Schools Kits contains; (1) A Concept Brief, to provide an overview of the approach and how to implement it; (2) The Catalogue of Technologies, compiling examples of low-cost and easy to implement technologies for each Blue Schools topic; (3) The Catalogue of Practical Exercises, compiling ideas of hands-on activities to inspire teachers on how to complement the theoretical lessons with practical learning; and (4) The Facilitator’s Guide, designed to provide a visual support to introduce the Blue Schools topics to students.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Bangladesh, Benin, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Nepal

Corresponsabilidad y cambio de comportamientos en separación y aprovechamiento de residuos sólidos en unidades educativas de tres regiones de Bolivia by HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation

This program consisted of three stages: a) Advocacy for local authorities and educational units to work on environmental management based on the national educational proposal of the Socio Productive Project in selected schools and municipalities; b) non-formal education for students, teachers and parents; c) training of environmental brigades in communication and educational tools for the adoption of habits (change of behaviours) in separation and use of solid waste in the population based on the RANAS (Risk, Attitude, Standard, Ability and Self-Regulation) methodology, which consists of identifying the factors that influence people's behaviour and working on each of these and their sub-factors through the so-called Behaviour Change Techniques (BCT).

Reuse

Reduce Recycle

 

Bolivia

Estrategia Educativa para la Gestión Integral de Residuos del Colegio Los Nogales by Colegio Los Nogales

The objects of this initiative are (1) educating community on collective responsibility of waste management in the school, and (2) reducing the volume of waste at school. The three main focus areas are; reducing food waste and introducing composting; reducing non-organic waste such as single use plastic; and collect recyclables as well as e-waste. Also, as the school’s strategy, a culture to reuse school uniforms has been introduced, as well as a book rental system. Moreover, to visualize the school's efforts, data collection at school was started which quantifies the water footprint and the money wasted.

Reduce reuse

Bogota, Colombia

YOONU ËLLËG (le chemin de l’avenir en wolof) by Association DJARAMA, Ndayane (SENEGAL) & ECOLE DU DIALAW

 

This program applies an open and child-centred pedagogy inspired, among others, by the Montessori approach adapted to the local context. Therefore, it provides many experimental lessons such as cultivating vegetables in the school garden, making compost, sorting waste, conducting diagnostic analysis of the waste from school bins, as well as visiting the dumpsite in Dakar and illegal disposal places around the schools. It further provides teachers with practical content and activities, focusing on children's participation and awareness.  Also, as parents share their behavioural change and give feedback, the programme can maximize its impacts in the community.

Refuse

Reduce

Reuse or Repair

Recycle

Ndayane, Senegal

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Get to know more

Contact : Andre Dzikus . Chief, Urban Basic Services Section United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) . WasteWiseCities@un.org

Contact : Andre Dzikus . Chief, Urban Basic Services Section United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) . WasteWiseCities@un.org