10 YEARS OF

EDUCATIONAL

WORKSHOPS ON

WASTE HIERARCHY

AND TREATMENT IN

SCHOOLS

Learning to live sustainably

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

• GoodPlanet Belgium, former GREEN

• Fost Plus, Green dot organization in Belgium (is a non-

profit organization founded by private companies that put

packaged products on the Belgian market to respond to

their producer responsibility as described in the waste

framework directive from the European Commission -

2008/98/EC)

• The mission of Fost Plus is to promote, coordinate, and

finance the selective collection, sorting, and recycling of

household packaging waste

• In their “promotion mission”, they decided to work with us

for educational workshops at school

WHO?

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

• At first OVAM (Flanders), later on ODW (Wallonie),

IBGE/BIM (Brussels region): the governmental

organizations for the three regions in Belgium, responsible

for “waste and waste treatment” legislation in Belgium.

• Intermunicipalities: Responsible for the collection of

household waste.

WHO?

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

• First contacts with partner(s) Fost Plus and in a second

term OVAM and the intermunicipal organizations

responsible for collecting household waste – developing

and testing the proposed workshops: 2003

• First large scale deployment of « Learning to treat waste

at school »: jan-june 2004: 650 workshops for children

aged 8-12 years old in their classroom.

• Since then each (scholar) year (sept-june): 1080

workshops

• Over the years: at least 200,000 children got the message

(some doubles included off course!)

FIGURES…

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

• 2007: Development of workshops (Role playing game,

debating game, or interactive quiz) for secondary grade

(age 16 to 18).

• 2008: Deployment at larger scale of « That’s tidy?! »: 850

each year, over 5000 classes reached,

100,000 youngsters got the message

(doubles included)

• 2011: Development of a workshop/storytelling for

preschool children (age 3-5)

• 2012: Large scale deployment “What’s going on in Dirty

Country?”

• Since then: 60.000 children in 3000 classes were visited

by the prince/princess from Dirty Country.

FIGURES…

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

• Larger then just the promotion of the good separation of

household waste! (Imperative to have the support of the

governmental organizations)

• Based on the “Ladder van Lansink” (Dutch professor who

set the bases for the 3 R strategy from Europe: Reduce-

Reuse-Recycle)

GOAL!

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

GOAL!

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

• GoodPlanet’s know-how: What’s appropriate for which

age?

• We’re familiar with both the pedagogical principles as with

the Belgian (Community Dutch-French!) goals for formal

education as described in the legislation.

• We’re not just teaching right from wrong: Interactive

methods, children/youngsters should develop their own

conviction/opinion

• It’s our goal to open up/to broaden their mind and to

motivate them to take the information we provide them

with into account when they make choices.

GOAL!

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

• Hard to measure hard data

• Investigation by student from University Brussels indicated

a certain influence on the waste treatment in the schools

itself when they participated (regularly) in the workshop.

• Another student investigated the knowledge the children

(age 8-12) retained after 3 months. Good result.

RESULTS

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

• Schools and their waste management: We talk to children

about the Belgian system of presenting your waste for

collection already sorted out (PMD, paper and cardboard,

glass and residual). Sometimes they discover afterwards

that the service personnel throws everything in one big

residual container… there goes our effort, guess what

choice they’ll make?!

• (Should be solved by now by new legislation in Flanders

since July 2013, in Brussels Feb 2014)

• We can tell what we want – It influences them shortly. In

the mean time they’re influenced 24/7 by advertising and

marketing. It isn't a fair “battle”…

CHALLENGES - CONTENT

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

• Preschool and primary: The demand is much higher then

the offer, so no problems there.

• Secondary (but, since we aim to influence their decision

taking probably the most important group): Hard to find

enough teachers willing to invite us. An investigation to

discover the reasons behind is being held. Our guess: We

do not reach the teachers, due to complex organization of

secondary schools, they are bounded to strict structure

and time table, hard to fit in our offer,…

CHALLENGES – TARGET GROUP

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

• The program was originally 100% financed by Fost Plus

(who is financed through green dot attribution (each

member company – over 5000- pays a fee based on the

packaging amount they put on the market) and the selling

of the collected fractions for recycling purposes.

• At first Flanders contributed 50 %

• Later Wallonia and Brussels followed

• But what will happen now after the elections?

CHALLENGES - FINANCES

Apprendre à vivre durablement

Leren duurzaam leven

Thank you!

Peter Hulpiau

Coordinator Program Schools – Member of the direction committee

T +32 (0)2 893 08 24

Gsm + 32 (0)473 86 65 27

p.hulpiau@goodplanet.be

GoodPlanet Belgium

Edinburgstraat 26 - 1050 Brussel

T +32 (0)2 893 08 08

F +32 (0)2 893 08 01