Participants from UNESCO's ASPNet schools

During the 2023 Litter Less Campaign, 20 UNESCO ASPNet schools from ten countries engaged over 20,000 students from 16 cities in campaign activities involving responsible consumption and production and reduction of litter and waste.

Schools selected the most relevant topics related to litter and waste depending on their context, e.g. some focused on plastic pollution, others on food waste or e-waste. Some on litter and waste and cross-cutting themes like the oceans or tourism. While others focused on responsible consumption and production and the circular economy, e.g. with fast fashion as an entry point. The following countries participated in the campaign, Dominican Republic, Finland, Gambia, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kingdom of Bahrain, Namibia, Oman, and Republic of Korea.

The campaign had a tremendous impact in participating schools and their communities with 21,000+ students participating in activities, 600+ teachers trained and 90,000+ persons reached through schools’ awareness raising campaigns, such as on plastic pollution, electronic waste or fast fashion.

The campaign’s focus to experiment with hands-on learning for sustainable development supported participating schools to drive innovation and transformation and act as living laboratories for global citizenship, intercultural understanding and sustainable development. Not only did the students and teachers manage to tackle real environmental challenges, but fostered their knowledge and critical analysis of litter and waste, enhanced their communication and teamwork skills, and initiated social responsibility and leadership in their communities.

Capacity building

Capacity development resources (lesson plans, online courses, tutorials, etc.) and community of practice online meetings encouraged and supported teachers to explore topics like pollution, climate change and the circular economy and approaches like action-oriented, student-centered, collaborative and community-based learning.

While time intensive, building a community of practice at global level proved very useful to ensure (a) continuous motivation and engagement of the schools in the campaign, (b) joint learning on shared (and sometimes new) topics of concern and (c) collaborative actions through partnerships with other schools and/or community stakeholders.

“This community is a great source of motivation and inspiration for us. Working together, we can achieve more!”
— Jenni Decandia, a teacher from Finland

80% of participating schools built a partnership with another school and 90% of schools engaged with new school-community partners from the public and private sectors.

Young Reporters for the Environment (YRE) competition

The activities have shown to empower participating students to engage with litter and waste related issues in their environment, exploring and implementing practical solutions and fostering their sense of commitment and leadership to more sustainable practices. Participation in the YRE competition has allowed students to share their ideas and learnings through writing, photography and videography.

“The competition offers us young people a real chance to make our voices heard and to feel that our voices matter.”
— Halah Noor, a student from Bahrain

Most participants reflected upon and aimed to increase visibility for their campaigns and projects to reach the general public but also to find partners and impact policy making. By May 2024, schools had reached over 90 000 individuals through awareness raising. In addition, a Bahraini school launched a food waste campaign, formed partnerships with other schools and successfully advocated for the integration of the topic into the national curriculum.

Scouts from Greece, Portugal and South Africa

In 2023, the Scouts from Greece, Portugal and South Africa engaged around 700 scout patrols and teams from 125 cities in the Litter Less Campaign where activities took place to promote responsible consumption and production, to reduce litter and waste, to work with the circular economy model and to reduce invisible pollutants. 17,000 scouts and non-scouts alike took part in Litter Less Campaign activities.

South Africa: The Champions for Nature National Challenge in South Africa significantly impacted SCOUTS South Africa by promoting positive environmental actions through conscientious consumption. The initiative included the Litter Less clean-up efforts, which engaged members in improving local community cleanliness. The integration of Litter Less into the National Challenge resulted in doubled participation compared to previous years, emphasising its success.

During February and March 2023, 3,042 members from SCOUTS South Africa including young people and children, adult volunteers, and parents, dedicated approximately 6,084 hours to cleaning their local areas, contributing significantly towards the SDGs and the wellbeing of their communities.

Portugal: In Portugal, Scouts launched the Earth Tribe initiative in 2020, transitioning from the World Scout Environment Badge. The project revealed the need to familiarise local groups with the new programme and provide tailored resources. Inspired by the successful Litter Less Campaign, the project aimed to enhance awareness and participation in the Earth Tribe initiative by creating additional resources and fostering partnerships with environmental NGOs and local ambassadors.

Portuguese Scouts from Corpo Nacional de Escutas, in collaboration with the Oceano Azul Foundation and the Lisbon Oceanarium, led the successful Month of the Sea campaign. From November 5 to 27, 3,164 Scouts participated in 70 initiatives, cleaning 72.9 km of coastal areas and removing 11.9 tons of marine litter.

Greece: The Earth Tribe Initiative in Greece, part of the Litter Less Campaign 2023, focused on addressing Water Litter and engaging young community members. Despite being a new addition to the scout programme, Earth Tribe showed significant influence, attracted youth and fostered a culture of action. By leveraging best practices and tools from WOSM and FEE, the initiative aims to raise awareness about Water Litter and empower young people to engage in community development through Earth Tribe Challenges.

Each organisation promoted LLC on social media campaign across multiple platforms to raise awareness about litter issues and promoted campaign events, such as the beach clean-ups. Scouts organised workshops in various communities (schools, churches, community centres) to inform residents about the importance of reducing litter and proper waste disposal practices.

The Scouts coordinated a series of clean-up events, encouraging volunteers to participate in cleaning local areas. The campaigns raised awareness about the litter problem, reaching thousands of people through social media. Over 17,000 individuals (scouts and non-scouts) actively participated in clean-up events, providing a significant number of volunteer hours. The clean-up efforts resulted in the removal of considerable amounts of litter from public spaces, improving the cleanliness and aesthetics of local communities.

Workshops informed community members about the importance of reducing litter and adopting sustainable practices. The campaigns built a sense of responsibility and long-term commitment among participants to continue efforts towards a cleaner environment.

India

In India, 195 schools took part in the 2023 Litter Less Campaign with approximately 280,000 students from 30 cities promoting the circular economy model and conducting activities to reduce litter and waste.

One of the main activities was the Litter Less Clean Up drive (Beach Clean Up Drive) for beach communities and ecologically sensitive areas. Other activities included upcycling actions and textile circularity in schools for students, teachers and parents. Competitions and panel discussions were also hosted across schools. Participating schools also organised teacher training workshops and sessions on waste management.

Overall, 500 kg waste was collected from an ecological sensitive area and 650kg textile waste was collected from different schools. Research on cigarette butts was carried out. And students held rallies to sensitise local communities to zero waste and litter-free events during festivals such as Diwali.

China

In China, over 300 schools and almost 170,000 students in 72 cities, participated in the Litter Less Campaign throughout 2023. The students worked on topics such as reducing invisible pollutants, responsible consumption and production and reducing litter and waste.

The scope of participation in the community action day had expanded, and not only children in cities, but also many rural schools actively participated. Many schools had also compiled practical teaching materials for waste classification and waste reduction.

2023 saw a breakthrough in reaching younger children. More preschool children in kindergartens were involved with environmental issues under the Litter Less Campaign, and through the guidance of kindergarten teachers and parents, they were trained to make use of the earth's resources and reduce waste generation.

This year's Litter Less Campaign was combined with activities such as zero-waste campus development, Better Environment Programme and Climate Smart Schools Development Project to carry out publicity, exchange and training. The overall effect of "1+1>2" was achieved. Experts and teachers fully shared and exchanged experiences in the Litter Less Campaign, and the children's practical achievements were acknowledged and encouraged by more people.

Based on the YRE programme, YRE clubs were established in various places to actively publicise and promote the Litter Less Campaign. This year, the number of news entries on waste reduction collected for YRE competition increased which also showed that YRE clubs from various places played a positive role in the community action days, while changing the local environment and spreading low-carbon concepts.

Malta

In Malta, 6,500 students from more than 70 schools participated in the Litter Less Campaign in 2023, all working on 15 different activities related to responsible consumption and production.

Activities were conducted by NTM and by schools through their community action days. The highlight was the participation of a local influencer in the training workshops. She is an ex Young Reporter for the Environment (YRE) and Eco-School student - and currently working as an influencer with a business focused on thrifting and reusing clothes. The schools were inspired by her experience as she was very enthusiastic in spreading examples of their work.

The schools carried out their usual community action days - focusing on waste reduction, promoting reusable materials and carrying out clean ups.

As part of the YRE celebration days, we had the opportunity to take participants to the newly-opened Ecohive Academy where students were offered interactive games and activities focused on pollution.

Promotion of activities is done mainly through social media and online newspapers. Schools are contacted via email though our strong network; in turn they publish their events on their respective social media pages.

The launch (influencers' workshops) was spread over a whole week, and was carried out in collaboration with Agenzija Zghazagh. In turn, they shared on their social media as well.

The annual YRE Celebration, held on the 28th and 30th of May, was published in local newspapers - and had a wide reach. The same was done for the end-of-year turtle release session on the 28th of June. Litter Less schools were invited, and the turtle was released by the minister. The local press were present.

Kingdom of Bahrain

A team of 10th grade students at the Ibn Khuldoon National School in the Kingdom of Bahrain launched a school-wide campaign to tackle e-waste. “The Forgotten Fortune” campaign aims to create awareness about the dangers of e-waste on the environment and how to reduce it. To study the issue, students visited the Bahraini Supreme Council for the Environment and the national e-waste management and recycling company. They also invited representatives from the public and private sectors to their school to discuss solutions. With the support of their teachers, the students are actively working on raising awareness by engaging their peers and communities through social media, competitions and events. For example, they are currently running a school-wide competition to collect e-waste, older students are teaching younger students and younger students are creating art out of the collected e-waste. By working collaboratively and creatively, the students are leading the way to a greener and more sustainable future.

Scouts and Aspnet

Dominican Republic: 

The schools are working more widely on sustainable development issues, including topics like renewable energy, recycling, water and reforestation. For example, one school focuses on reforestation through their “Green Day”. Students plant trees and continuously monitor their growth and conditions. In the other school, students are campaigning for renewable energy and recycling to green their school grounds. 

 

Italy: 

One of the schools focuses on maritime pollution and students got active through beach clean ups. They also work on the preservation of local biodiversity. For example, the school is collaborating with the local Environmental Education Center and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in their vicinity to learn about local species and how to preserve them and, at the same time, to develop an app for tourists with main points of interests through photos and explanations. 

The other school has set up an 8 Module course focusing on the SDGs. Students study the SDGs and select one to deepen their understanding of the interrelationship with the other goals and they develop ideas and action plans to bring about change locally. A community action day is planned in the spring as well as documentation and evaluation of the project. 

 
 

Japan: 

The school focuses on student research and awareness raising on single-use plastics and more generally plastic waste. A focus is placed on using digital tools and building public awareness. For example, students take part in community service to pick up litter in community spaces, prepare an article for the school newspaper, create a website to present their research digitally and posters to display findings on the high school campus, university campus and local city office. 

Namibia: 

The schools in Namibia have focused on raising awareness of litter and waste issues in their schools and communities. For example, the environmental club in one school organized an assembly for the entire school to learn and discuss the importance of keeping the environment clean, share ideas on how to keep the school grounds clean and how to recycle waste at the school. Following the assembly, the entire school community participated in a school clean up. 
 

Republic of Korea: 

The school’s work has focused on students conducting research and writing articles on food waste and single-used plastics. Students reflected on their own and their communities’ consumption behaviours and lifestyle and investigated in their own school’s food waste management. 

Kingdom of Bahrain

One of the schools is co-leading with another 70 schools in Bahrain a nationwide waste-reduction campaign "MyCleanPlate”, which has been initiated by Bahraini youth and which is officially supported by the Ministry of Youth and Sports Affairs and the Ministry of Education. They launched the campaign in September on the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste. The objective is to promote a culture of responsible food consumption, change individual food consumption behaviour and to reduce the overall amount of food wasted in Bahrain. The long-term goal is to achieve inclusion of responsible food consumption in the Ministry of Education’s environmental curriculum by 2025. The school is collaborating with a restaurant chain to study food waste. Their first findings are that in a month half a ton of edible food is being wasted that could feed 236 people in hunger. They are also establishing a protocol for responsible food consumption. Students are actively engaged in the social media campaign by creating contents. 

 

The other school focuses its work on tacking e-waste through a school-wide campaign labelled “The forgotten fortune: e-waste campaign”. Teachers first introduced students to the Litter Less Campaign and launched a competition for the best name and logo for their school-based campaign. A team of students from tenth grade manage the campaign with the support of their teachers. They have organized field trips to the national e-waste management and recycling company and the Bahraini Supreme Council for the Environment to study the issue. They also started a social media campaign through the school’s communication channels and by creating dedicated accounts on Instagram and TikTok. Their objective is to create awareness within the community of the dangers of e-waste on the environment and how to reduce e-waste. They are engaging the entire school community and beyond through competitions and events. For example, they organized a high-school wide meeting on e-waste to which they invited representatives from civil society and private sector to share information and ideas to tackle e-waste. They are currently engaging the entire school in a competition on collecting e-waste. Older students are teaching younger students about e-waste and younger students are using e-waste to make art pieces. Bahrain’s largest national telecommunications company is financing the competitions and agreed to sharing their campaign through their social media channels. The students have also engaged in beach clean ups and some students participated in a trip to Iceland where they studied approaches to waste management and sustainability. 

New Zealand

We had the majority of participants getting involved in clean ups and auditing waste in 79 towns and cities across New Zealand. We promoted the LLC hashtag throughout the campaign on Facebook and Instagram. This year we also promoted our Litterless campaign action days to our primary schools (students aged 5-10) in conjunction with our annual Clean up Week and citizen science programmes (where students take their litter pick one step further and also compete a detailed litter audit). These schools have free access to select our YRE lesson plans and guides from our website to support their students with Litterless campaign activities. 


New Zealand

Planting Initiative

O'Driscoll House undertook a planting initiative at the local Oakley Creek to attract wildlife to urban areas and to protect the health and cleanliness of the creek. The creek is home to plenty of native flora and fauna and including the threatened Longfin eel. They had an impressive result of 30 students planting 650 native species in one day! Initiatives like this help support native species and promote ecosystem biodiversity!

India

Environment Youth club’s clean-up campaign

Environment Conservation Youth Club (ECYC) conducted a clean-up campaign at Bhavani Beach, Mahuva near Bhavnagar in Gujarat, India. With about 30 volunteers, the group cleaned a one kilometer coastal stretch in just 3 hours. The group collected 15-20 kilograms of solid dry waste including single-use plastic bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, polythene bags, cement sacks, and other solid dry waste.

Later, this waste was sent for proper disposal and recycling. Bottle caps were collected separately and reused to make decorative pieces, while plastic is used to make bricks and benches.

China

“Waste reduction starts with me”

Panlong Primary School joined hands with the community of Yingxiang, Jinchen Street, Pan Long District, to carry out the event themed " Waste reduction starts with me —work together to build an international ecology school".

Participating in the paper waste reduction activities were families of various sizes, with little and large hands working together. Parents and children created their own record sheets to track the amount of garbage they produced each day, and then the entire community came together to weigh the total weight of paper garbage produced over the course of a two weeks, with each family striving to become more environmentally (and economically) conscious.

Aside from that, the parents and children launched a waste reduction campaign to raise awareness of the issue across the community, resulting in a positive attitude towards saving paper and resource conservation.

Brazil

Sharing Knowledge about Sustainability

As a Community Action Day, 11 YRE schools from 11 different municipalities got together for an Environmental Seminar, sharing presentations and videos about their actions and community engagement during the Litter Less Campaign. It was a great way for students to share their knowledge about sustainability and the environment as well as to inspire others and meet new people!

To make this day even better, students also created a song and dance that they performed for the audience of guests, teachers and their fellow students.

Ireland

Online YRE Workshops

Funding was used to develop and hold four separate workshops throughout the academic year including the Winner's Workshop which was premiered on YouTube on 10th June 2021 (attached here). 

The three skills-based webinars reached over 600 participants at the time of writing and included workshops on: 

  1. Videography with RTÉ (National Broadcaster) journalist

  2. Photo skills for future photojournalists 

  3. How to write an article with Irish Times journalist 

India

A simple act for a nice action!

Did you know: Fruits and vegetables peels can be source of nutrients for plants. The leftovers from fruits and vegetables can be mixed with water, so the nutrients are absorbed by the water. The mixture should then be filtered through a sieve before it is ready to be used as fertilized water for plants. 

Tip: Just replace regular water with this fertilized water and see how your plants bloom!

New Zealand

Operations Reduce Plastics

Aparima College began their YRE campaign, Operations Reduce Plastics, with a school-wide presentation that covered some of the most worrying statistics about plastics in the world and in their local environment.  The students introduced a plan to measure the number of plastic bottles used by staff and students and ran a survey of student and staff opinions on how much plastic waste they produced.  After keeping a weekly tally of different types of materials, they discovered that the Staffroom was the worst culprit, with an average of 20 milk bottles used every week!

The school installed six Recycling Stations which included recycling and compost buckets and made a commitment to reduce their use of plastic by banning plastic utensils in the Soup Kitchen, making beeswax wraps, and by keeping refrigerated food in crockery bowls covered by plates rather than using cling film or plastic containers.

Students concluded the campaign by holding recycling craft activities, with the students making Bee Hotels and Christmas decorations.

A change of behaviour was observed as a result of the campaign.  Students and staff put their plastics in the recycling bins and many now choose to bring metal reusable drink bottles to school and use the drinking fountains.

France

Creative Community Action Days

On Tuesday May 25, a big Community Action Day took place. It was a for 180 grade 4 students by Saint Stanislas’ school. There were workshops such as one for creating bulk bags or masks. YRE students were involved, worked on waste and in collaboration with the association called “Hirondelle”. At the same time, a waste collection was organized in the establishment by a 6th grade class. The day of action gave rise to an exhibition which lasted one week. Reports and the product of waste collection were including there.

Albert Schweitzer middle school also held a well-developed Community Action Day. Initially scheduled from April 5 to 16, the programme took place from June 14 to June 22. It was an opportunity to exhibit virtually and, in the documentation and information centre. The work of students was showcased such as posters, reports and podcast. The goal was also to offer various educational workshops related to the climate class project.

On this occasion, the Nature et Société association intervened in all 6th grade classes with different subjects such as deciphering the news, understanding global environmental issues through experimentation and observation or being a local player. The eco-delegates especially had to take part in a discovery trail of local biodiversity between the college and the house of nature with same stakeholders as already quoted. The sustainable development and vegetable garden clubs held activities and workshops to showcase their actions with primary school students.

Many other eco-responsible actions were planned such as a clean run. This programme reached between 300 and 700 people.

Wales

Home learning challenges

Carrying out YRE – LLC investigations during Covid-19 times is not that obvious, especially when schools are closed. Nevertheless, the motivation of Welsch students is not in lockdown ; many schools have taken part as a home learning challenge and that has been a real highlight!

Sian Sykes, a famous Welsh paddle boarder and environmental campaigner, produced some short motivation videos to inspire students to take part in online YRE - LLC activities. Viewed over 1500 times in the social media, this initiative was an inspiration for students, leading to promising actions.  

Wales (2).png

Northern Ireland

“YRE and Much More!” webinar

Once YRE, Forever YRE!

It is no coincidence that this moto lays in the heart of every YRE member. Sharing experiences and enthusiasm from different YRE generations  is a key component for the upcoming Young Reporters.

An international collaboration between Eco – Schools Norther Ireland and ABAE Portugal aimed to gather the voices of YRE Ambassadors, teachers and active reporters during a webinar “YRE and Much More!”. The goal also was to allow both staff and students to further discover the different opportunities related to the programme, such as international collaborations, and the YRE process.

Margarida Gomes, Environmental Education and Education for Sustainability Project Manager at ABAE Portugal, lead this session and transmitted her passion to the attending students.

Spain

A creative and participatory solution to recover the school garden

Due to the future collapse of a building, the CEIP Virgen del Rosario school lost its school garden. Schoolers proposed to recover it and its activity by making a greenhouse in a glazed corridor of the school. They imagined flowerpots made with reused containers and with water use systems. The flowerpots have been made by families and the sowing has been done by teachers and students since January.
They also carried out a waste cleaning with the students on the roads, the
countryside and the village stream.