Zero Waste – Our Taste Erasmus Project

Project Title

Zero Waste – Our Taste

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Natural sciences; Environment and climate change; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

Take a look behind most of the shools and you will see dumpsters full of classroom paper, plastic bags, discarded cafeteria food, milk cartons and paper towels. Day-to-day operations in a typical school require lots of resources, very little of which gets reused, reclaimed or recycled. Many of us think of recycling and composting, but what is Zero Waste? Zero Waste is more of a goal, than a literal zero. Educating children about green ways of living is a must. Children learn a lot from their surroundings and everyday work, that is why we decided to organize a Zero waste project.
This project is focused on showing our pupils how to modify their everyday actions to improve the environment. We want to lead our pupils, teachers and local community towards the fact, that a zero waste strategy can help us to reduce, reuse and recycle waste. A zero waste approach also protects the health of communities by reducing pollution in the air, water and soil by keeping toxics and waste out of landfills and incinerators. We would like to think of tools and actions we can take within our current system that will drastically cut down on our waste, reduce our carbon footprint, and just generally help us be better stewards of the planet. We are ready to contribute to our local communities, as we would also like to participate in redistribution of useful goods to those in need, from leftover food donated to shelters, to flee market with the second-hand clothes.
It is important to create methodology, materials and brochures that we could use after the end of the project, as we want to maintain the extensive environmental education at our schools in subjects like Science, Environmetal education, , Home Economics, Biology, Citizenship, Geography and English. Next objective we would like to achieve, is to improve our pupils’ lifelong learning skills, such as teamwork, leadership skills, sense of responsibility, time keeping, compromising, flexibility, entrepreneurship, solving problems and independent work. We are sure this project will be an opportunity for improving their self-confidence, communication and social skills. All these will be supported by the interaction of the participants attending the short-term exchanges of groups of pupils and teachers. These mobilities will take place in each country during the two years of this project.
There are six partner schools participating in the project from the following countries: the Czech Republic, Portugal, Lithuania, Cyprus, Slovenia and Spain. The participants are mainly pupils around the age of 11 – 15 years old including some with fewer opportunities, that means mainly with economic or social obstacles and educational difficulties.
All the project activities will be on the subject of environmental education. There is a wide range of them, like zero waste cooking workshops, remanufacturing, upcycling and craft workshops, watching a movie, debates, creating boards, presentations, logo, booklets, comics, doing dramatizations, reasearches and quizes. There are also some events for families and public planned – exchange market, flea market, exhibitions or a project day. To do these project activities, we will use innovative methods like the project method and teamwork in groups of pupils. We are focusing on collaboration with not only pupils but teachers as well and also their ability to solve problems, in case they come across issues that need to be clarified.
The outcomes will be presented to the public. All the results and products of the project activities will be displayed and will be available to the whole community. We expect to use the outcomes and methodology after the end of the project too. There will be presentations about various products called Lifestory of… , cookbook with recipes for cooking from leftovers and basic foodstaff, catalogue of art works of the pupils, poster, leaflets, story maker booklet, video report, Zero Waste challenge calendar, quizes about composting and bio waste and others created.
The general expected results are maintaining close ties between cultures, sharing and exchanging innovative methods and tools, learning how to communicate, discovering European culture, respecting the cultural, geographical diversity among European countries, improving success and motivation of pupils especially from disadvantaged backgrounds and gaining the ability to understand and explain opinions in oral and written language.
This project reflects the current problems of today’s life and helps to educate not only children to be responsible citizens of our society but the adults as well.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 185620 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zakladni skola Veseli nad Moravou, Hutnik 1456, okres Hodonin, prispevkova organizace & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• ESCOLA PIA OLOT
• ALFACOOP – Cooperativa de Ensino, CRL
• GYMNASIO PETRAKI KYPRIANOU
• Osnovna sola Sostro
• Kauno rajono Raudondvario gimnazija