Waste is not a new issue in Environmental and Sustainability Education. When the so-called new environmentalism rose back in the 1960s, provoked by the increasing pollution of air, water and soil, waste and waste treatment became the focus of efforts to raise the consciousness of waste problems and change people’s practices (Jamison, 2001). Later, the waste issue became appropriated in technical waste management systems (Ekström, 2015) and obtained an image in environmental education research as a quite restricted, conventional and instrumental part of environmental education. Today, we propose, waste education in schools and daycares is still considered to be, in Scott & Vare’s terms, ESD 1 (Vare & Scott, 2007). While it is true that some waste education is expert and fact-driven, the aim of this contribution is to offer a more complex picture of how waste becomes part of school and daycare education. 

Learning about waste and resources forms part of the curriculum for primary and lower secondary schools in Denmark, and constitutes an optional theme in daycare institutions.  Based on an ongoing research and development project we will present and discuss challenges and perspectives related to schools and day-care as learning arenas for waste treatment. Key focus areas in the empirical research are the processes unfolding when technical and pedagogical approaches to waste treatment in schools and daycare meet each other and when educational institutions interact with parents on waste issues. This presentation will focus on the research question, “how is household waste brought into play in schools and daycare institutions in Denmark?”  

The analysis of empirical data suggests that bringing household waste into play in different educational contexts in Denmark releases various conceptual reworkings and recontextualisations of understandings of waste. These educational understandings of waste disclose different educational approaches, practices and engagements with waste as material. We will elaborate on, and critically discuss, the empirical findings by drawing on theories on recontextualisation (Beech, 2006), technological domestication (Lie & Sørensen, 1996) everyday practice theory (Shove, 2012; de Certeau, 1984), waste management and consumer culture (Ekström, 2015), materiality (Ingold, 2011), in dialogue with generic theories on EE/ESE.

In accordance with Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons’ (2001) outline of Mode 2 research, our interactive approach intends to produce robust, context and process sensible and applicable knowledge in collaboration with other stakeholders rather than evident, immediately reproducible results. At the same time, as this presentation will show, we aim at contributing to theory development on waste in ESE as a generic knowledge base which may inspire waste education in other settings and contexts.

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