ENVIRONMENT, WASTE GENERATION AND CONSCIOUS CONSUMPTION ¹Carolina Y. S Theophilo, ¹Paul Fooster, ²Ivone Silveira da Silva. ¹Students and ²Professor of UNIFESP – Campus Diadema
INTRODUCTION The Project “Waste Generation and Conscious Consumption” has been developed in Diadema city that has one of the most demographic densities of Brazil. This population concentration causes an increase of the waste generation in the city as well as a decrease of depositions areas with incurring managing costs. This project has begun in 2008 with support of the City Hall when UNIFESP students have mapped the waste generated in several areas of the city. The data obtained were used to develop educational material. This material was used to provide environmental education classes in municipal schools (Figures 1 and 2). The aim of these classes was to sensitize the children because they represent future generations and they have a greater ease in passing on to parents and family what they have learned, and this is very good to the progress of the project.
GOAL The main goal is to promote environmental awareness especially in relation to waste generation, the recycling importance and conscious consumption, focusing on students between 5 and 10 years old. The project also aims to make students pass on the knowledge acquired to parents, family and neighbors, so that the conscious consumption can grow in the community where these children live.
Figure 1: Picture of children of the School Hall Anita Catarina Malfatti making toys with reused material.
Figure 2: Students making a filter of PET bottle, rock and cotton by students of elementary school (5th year).
METHODOLOGY There was also made a mapping of the quantity of waste generation, whose data appears in FREIRE et al. (2009) work. First of all, it was achieved a fieldwork in which was possible to observe a large quantity of trash in the stream flows of Diadema city. Classes of environmental education to students from 1st to 5th year of elementary school. For each classroom of the School Anita Catarina Malfatti.
MAIN APPROACHES: 3 R’s = Reduce, Reuse and Recycle on figure 7; Waste generation; Waste generation disposal.
RESULTS
Figure 3: Drawing made by a student of the 5th year (elementary school) after the class about conscious consumption.
Figure 5: Drawing made by a student of the 2nd year (elementary school) after the class about recycling.
Figure 4: Drawing made by a student of the 5th year (elementary school) about the future, if we take care of our waste or not.
Figure 6: Drawing made by a student of the 1st year (elementary school), showing what attitude we should have.
Basic knowledge about environment cares; Concepts were depth with during classes of Environmental Education; Interest from students in problems involved to the question of waste generation. Figure 7: The 3 R’s, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, in order of importance.
The knowledge acquired was measured by drawing made in the final of some classes, showed in figures 3, 4, 5 and 6, and by questions formulated in the beginning of each new class about the topic previously addressed. Thus, there were made graphics about the results, obtained in the following figure 8. The students participated of the practice classes too, revealing themselves a more efficient method of explaining some concepts, for example, the difference between recycle and reuse. They got very excited with the toys that they could produce by reused materials, which showed itself a positive result.
CONCLUSIONS
Recycling Importance 100,0%
Elementary school children are still very needy of more classes like those; A lot of them have been learning wrong attitudes from their parents, like throwing trash in the streets, waste a lot, not recycling; A positive point of these classes was the interest in the environment demonstrated by the most students; Even the younger are attentive to the problems related to waste generation and to conscious consumption.
3R s Concept and Conscious Consumption
80,0%
100,0%
Understood Not Understood
67,14%
84,31% 76,62% 68,42%
61,83% 60,0%
60,0% 40,0%
80,0%
32,86%
38,17%
40,0%
31,58%
Understood Not understood
60,6% 39,4%
50,8% 49,2%
55,6% 44,4%
51,0% 49,0%
54,3% 45,7%
4th year
5th year
23,38% 15,69%
20,0%
20,0% 0,0%
0,0%
1st year
2nd year
3rd year
4th year
5th year
1st year
2nd year
3rd year
Figure 8: Results of the knowledge acquired by the children after all the classes, through the analysis of the drawings and of the answers about the topics addressed.