Waste reduction

Environmental education (EE) poses an opportunity to build recycling rates in communities by engaging students, teachers, and parents. In Iran, municipal recycling rates hover around 8% annually compared to other countries where municipal recycling rates can exceed 80% each year. The researchers drew upon the Albanian Health Promoting Schools Model (HPSM), which promotes health and well-being in the curriculum with different projects for students, teachers, and parents.

Environmental and sustainability education (ESE) covers various topics. Of these, waste management has become prevalent given the increased focus on plastic pollution and other material waste. Waste management has typically been viewed in popular culture as a problem in which the consumer should take responsibility for their material consumption. For example, recycling, composting, separating waste materials, and choosing not to litter are key lessons in ESE regarding waste management.

In the past few years, national parks in the United States have experienced an increased number of visitors, and with that, the amount of waste has also increased. Research has focused on identifying ways to reduce littering behavior by park visitors. However, little research has been conducted on visitors' waste generation, proper waste disposal, or the drivers of visitor behaviors around waste management. This study used visitor surveys to determine what factors influence waste generation and disposal behaviors to help inform future management strategies.

Environmental education (EE) continues to grapple with how best to develop youth leaders in sustainability. Previous research indicates that assumptions around a direct relationship between attitudes and behavior change is too simplistic. Instead, more recent literature finds that learning is complex and social. This study explored whether and how a program for high school students promoted transformational learning and action competence through a participatory evaluation process.

Environmental education programs often use learning materials such as videos, prints, or websites to promote environmental knowledge, awareness, pro-environmental behaviors, and to improve recall among students. These materials are generally called environmental education materials (EEMs), and organizations have created protocols for classroom application for EEMs. NAAEE created the Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence to help practitioners use high quality EEMs.

As a growing population generates more waste, the world's landfills are rapidly filling. Poor waste management strategies can lead to contamination of nearby water or soil, disease transfer, and increased greenhouse gas emissions. A possible solution to this issue is source separation, which can reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfills. Source separation refers to the practice of separating waste into different categories and containers when it is generated, so that certain types can be recycled or reused. However, educating people to sort their waste can be challenging.

Millions of people attend zoos and aquariums each year, but little is known about how these institutions impact their patrons' behavior after they leave. Researchers have attempted to measure how EE influenced long-term behavior change in humans; however, long-term studies are time consuming and costly. As a result, data collection is often challenging.

Many college campuses are adopting campus common reading programs. In these programs, first-years, typically, are all encouraged to read the same book and engage with it during classes and programing. Many of these programs select books that discuss a current issue, such as race relations, immigration, or the environment, in an effort to foster dialogue. The books can serve as a common base of knowledge and evidence for these discussions.

Garden-based learning can help students better understand sustainability and potentially have a positive impact on food security. Though little previous research exists, other studies have found links between these pedagogies and an increase in healthy eating, knowing more about the environment, taking pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) and having pro-environmental attitudes. Because the school year largely does not coincide with the growing season, hydroponics and aquaponics—agricultural methods to grow food indoors—could be used in place of outdoor gardens.

As the concept of education for sustainability has grown in prominence, many schools and teachers are eager to implement sustainability education in the classroom. Teachers, however, may feel unsure of how to teach about sustainability: they may not have much opportunity to build their knowledge base in this area and, as such, may not have a great deal of experience in developing and implementing sustainability education programs.