Waste management education: from kindergarten to higher education

The paper presents an innovative waste management education framework named ‘Greenopoli’ that has involved around 300 schools and more than 50,000 students, mainly in Southern Italy, from December 2014 up to now. The basic idea of Greenopoli is that children and youth are able to pick up and understand environmental issues (better than adults) and can be encouraged to act as agents of change for promoting and enabling change to happen within their extended family. Childhood and youth education about waste management is a key means not only to make children and youth fully aware of their active role in the society but also to make those messages understandable for everyone. Greenopoli identifies three aspects of educational activities (contents, methods, and times) that have to be differentiated according to age of students, from kindergarten to higher education, and develops effective methods to achieving its goals.