Save 4 Waste

Food waste is a recognized problem that has gained political, economic, and social importance in recent years. Most of the systemic challenges of eliminating food waste stem from certain mindsets ...

S4W project focuses on the following objectives to: - train students on issues upon food waste management; - raise awareness to students to reduce food waste through pilot actions; - emphasize the important role that schools play as an educational agent sensitizing the future generations on food waste management; - demonstrate the potential for reduction of waste through source separation, reuse, and recycling of organic waste; - empower teachers and school directors by providing technical knowledge and up-to-date information on waste management and particularly on organic waste management: characteristics, treatment techniques, challenges, and benefits; - present case studies and examples from the discipline that have been successful in managing the organic fraction of their waste and could adapt on school environments; - encourage schools that do not yet take actions to start activities regarding managing waste particularly the organic fraction; - spread waste management education wide across schools in European Union by providing useful practices and methods.

Management ensured efficient and effective project administration. The main activities of the project were: PR1 – Training Course Development and relevant training material, Piloting test activities on food waste management and practice and S4W Toolkit development for teachers and NGOs; PR2 – Policy Recommendation Development, Validation and Finalization Training Material Development. Project partners designed and developed a training course for teachers from primary schools to offer insights on food waste management and enhance the understanding of its significance. Once the training course was completed, qualified NGOs trained the teachers from primary schools on the training material. Afterwards, teachers were responsible to work with their students in order to transmit good practices and the proper knowledge related to food waste management, and thus students have been prepared to work on and implement their own project idea regarding the food waste solutions. Teachers guided learners throughout their journey. They encouraged students’ participation, provided ongoing support and feedback on the assignments.

S4W project is based on 2 main project results each of them was planned in accordance with the required resources and in view of achieving a manageable distribution of workload among the partners. Each of the results has been detailed in concrete and reasonable activities and outputs in order to allow continuous monitoring of activities. The main expected resources that were used for ensuring the wide recognition of the project’s results were the training materials, the piloting activities, the competition event focusing on innovative ideas from students related to the provision of solutions to waste management issues and the project’s Toolkit for teachers and NGOs. To this purpose, the Toolkit ensured the availability and sustainability of the project’s results and the highest possible level of transferability of the tools, materials and methodologies developed within the project, also including resources, references and materials developed within the project, tools that can be exploited to offer training activities to learners at various environments, the evidence from piloting activities. By sharing our project’s research results with the rest of the scientific community, we pursue to contribute to the progress of science in ge