Every year, World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5, mobilizes schools to organize awareness campaigns, tree-planting initiatives, community cleanup efforts, lectures, and educational activities that help students reflect on the environmental challenges affecting their communities and the planet. But what happens after the day is over? Now is the time to keep the momentum going!
One way to do this is to integrate the topic across the curriculum and into everyday school practices, as advised by Sérgio Monforte, Project Officer in Natural Sciences sector of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Brazil. “If you’re teaching chemistry, you can address issues like the environment, pollution, and basic sanitation. If you’re teaching math, you can explore topics related to statistics and measurements,” he explains.
According to Monforte, while these World Environment Day activities are important for raising awareness among children and young people, they can also serve as a starting point for something even greater: transforming environmental concerns into scientific solutions with a real impact on communities. Instead of merely discussing problems such as waste generation, resource waste, or environmental degradation, students can take on the role of researchers and solution developers.
“This approach can be applied to everyday life, reflecting on how the school has been handling waste sorting, how it has been using natural resources, how it obtains energy, whether it comes from solar or wind power… I really like Solve for Tomorrow, which encourages students to develop projects based on real-world issues, on students’ daily lives,” he notes, referring to the Samsung program active in 21 Latin American countries, aimed at strengthening young people’s interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) to address and solve local challenges that affect their lives and communities.
STEM projects, then, are a powerful tool for taking environmental education to the next level. Through Project-Based Learning, teachers can encourage students’ active participation in developing solutions to the environmental challenges around them.
A campaign conducted at the school can generate initial questions, such as:
- What happens to the waste produced in our community?
- How can we reduce food waste?
- Are there more sustainable ways to generate energy for the community?
- How can we support local economic activities without harming the environment?
Around the world, UNESCO addresses this issue through various ongoing campaigns, such as “green schools” and “citizen science”. “It’s important to involve the school community in the challenge of fostering a better relationship between humans and nature, promoting quality of life, conservation, and respect for the environment,” he emphasizes.
In one of the initiatives supported by UNESCO in Brazil, the Citizen Science Project in the Doce River Basin, Monforte notes how academic subjects, which once seemed abstract, now make more sense to young people. “We have the students themselves monitoring water quality in the river near the school, analyzing the increase in biodiversity, and bringing those findings back into the classroom as a way to learn more about biology, math, and chemistry,” he explains.
When these positive-change initiatives move beyond the drawing board and become common practice at school, it also becomes possible to work concretely toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “The SDGs and international agreements and conventions sometimes remain confined to high-level diplomatic discussions , but they need to reach people’s daily lives. So, I think these projects fulfill this role of bringing those conventions into schools and into communities,” he concludes.
Discover inspiring stories from Latin America
When refined, these questions can guide research, interviews, observations, and experiments. This was the case with the “Sulcac Orgânico” project, winner of Solve for Tomorrow in Peru in 2023. Through testing and guidance from agriculture and technology professionals, students discovered that it was possible to improve avocado production, one of the main sources of livelihood for the village where they live, using only a sulfur-calcium solution (made with sulfur and calcium oxide). Learn more here.
In Paraguay, students developed the “Smartbin” project to address two persistent problems: the accumulation of organic waste from school lunches and the country’s energy deficit. They developed a smart waste container that converts organic waste into biogas, a clean and renewable energy source. The initiative won the Solve for Tomorrow competition in 2024 in Paraguay. Learn more here.
For the “Hidrosung” project, the team also began by analyzing various environmental challenges in their community. In the prototype, dirty household water is poured into a container . Inside, a homemade turbine spins to separate the organic waste from the water. Any non-organic waste that sometimes gets caught in the filter is removed and disposed of in the appropriate trash bin. In the end, the water is clean, and the kinetic energy generated by the movement produces electricity. Additionally, the separated waste can be used as fertilizer for agriculture. Read more here.
How can you turn a World Environment Day activity into a STEM project?
World Environment Day can be the starting point for an investigation that lasts weeks or even months. To do this, educators can help students follow a few simple steps:
- Observe the surroundings
After the awareness-raising activities, encourage the class to identify environmental challenges at the school or in the community. - Turn observations into questions
Every investigation begins with a good question. Instead of just discussing the problem, encourage students to ask: “Why does this happen?”, “Who is affected?”, and “What can we do to improve this situation?” - Research and listen to the community
It’s time to gather information. Students can interview residents, talk to experts, consult public data, and research similar initiatives already implemented elsewhere. - Brainstorm possible solutions
Based on what they’ve discovered, the groups can develop ideas to address the identified challenge. At this stage, it’s important to encourage creativity and show that every solution starts as a hypothesis. - Create and test prototypes
Students can build models, conduct experiments, develop apps, launch campaigns, or create other proposals tailored to the school’s specific context. The most important thing is to test their ideas, evaluate the results, and make improvements. - Share the results
By presenting their findings and solutions to the school community, students practice communication, strengthen their sense of agency, and realize that their ideas can bring about real change.
