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Børn og affald

Summary and conclusions

“We can’tt survive without meat – if the animals die because there’is so much garbage and poisonous things everywhere – then people will also end up dying.”

Fifth grade boy

The quote is from a national survey of fifth grade student’s garbage habits. In the survey, 500 fifth grade students nationwide have been asked about their relationship to garbage and about throwing garbage in the streets and in the countryside. The thesis behind the survey is that children today throw away more garbage than before because they have more money to spend.

As part of the survey, interviews with specialists, scientists and practitioners in the field of children and garbage have been completed.

The survey sheds light on 12-year olds as garbage-producing consumers and provides advice as to what can be done to heighten the children’s awareness of garbage and change their habits.

12-year olds: Big children, small adults

Students in the fifth grade are an extremely differentiated middle group of children. On one side there are the “big children” who still play with dolls and climb trees. On the other side “pre-teenagers”, who have started reflecting on the bigger questions in life, as for example environmental questions and their own role as citizens.

However, the survey shows that it is not garbage and environmental problems that top the children’s list of important questions. These are not topics they discuss among themselves or at home: “It’s not my problem. It’s nature’s problem. A wind just has to come along and blow it away.”

When asked directly, they think that education concerning environment and garbage is boring and uninteresting. Only half of the children even remember having worked with these subjects at school. However, quite a lot of the students remember parts of projects or sequences in which they have worked with garbage. Especially clear in their memories are garbage collections.

12-year olds can be efficient “environmental ambassadors” when their curiosity or indignation is awoken. And this interest can have a positive influence on the whole family’s environmental and energy habits. This group of children have both the enthusiasm and spontaneity of younger children, and the seriousness of older children.

We will end up dying

It is characteristic for 12-year-old children that their sense of proportion is not yet fully developed, as the introduction quote clearly illustrates. This means, that scary stories and lifted fingers concerning their consumption and garbage habits will not stimulate the children into either working with environmental problems, or into improved behaviour with regards to garbage. On the contrary, there is a danger that the children will turn their backs on the issue, because they are already daily confronted with a lot of frightening information about environmental disasters around the world. 12-year olds are aware that they should be concerned about the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, and groundwater pollution. However, they do not have any clear ideas as to what these terms mean, or how they can contribute.

Among the children participating in the survey, there is a widespread perception of the fact that garbage can harm both animals and people in the future. At the same time, the children have difficulties explaining what the consequences of the garbage will be for the environment and what, more specifically, will happen in the future. They tend to imagine very frightening future scenarios. On the other hand, they have some very specific and detailed perceptions about the consequences of garbage for animals. And it is first and foremost for the sake of animals that they take exception to garbage thrown away in the countryside. The aesthetic dimension and the concern for people come in second place. As one boy says: “You know – animals are innocent, right? They can’t do anything about it…and the animals are out in the countryside all the time.”

Garbage is part of the city

The survey shows, that children from the city are particularly careless as regards finding the garbage bin: “There’s always garbage already – and then you think, that maybe it really doesn’t matter if some more garbage comes along…somebody must come and pick it up sometime…!”  The children perceive garbage on the streets as annoying, but an inevitable part of the city. However, garbage in more traditional nature areas like the beach and forest tends to make the children indignant.

It is kind of goody-goody to use the garbage bin

Children have values and role models to which they attach their environmental habits. Some will typically find their role models through the idols in the media, others through the older students in school (image-seeking children and youngsters). Still others have their norms and values with them from home (tradition-bound children and youngsters). Furthermore, there is a “leftover group” who do not have a foothold of values anywhere. This group can broadly be termed as indifferent children and youngsters, who do not see the big deal in throwing a soda can here and there: “When you take a walk with your friend and she throws her sticky ice cream paper in the street, then you don’t want to walk around with yours in your pocket, do you?”  The behaviour and actions by students from more senior grades are generally very influential on younger students. And even though the students, on the face of things, disapprove of the older student’s actions in for instance littering, many of them are absorbed by being cool: “It is kind of goody goody to use the garbage bin.”, as one of the girls says. Waiting to throw away your garbage is, however, not perceived as being cool. Several of the children think that they themselves will litter more when they get older: “You get very busy when you get older, that might be the reason why you have to litter more!”

Garbage as education

The traditional way of teaching (transmission of knowledge) is neither suitable for making the students more environmentally conscious, nor for changing their (bad) habits. The scientists and experts interviewed all agree about this. This is a type of education that one scientist calls the “school-like” – a type of education that aims at illustrating and evaluating the world – not changing it. The student’s awareness of environmental matters, their willingness to act, and their confidence in the significance of their own influence, depends on whether teaching has an element of action in it. To make room for this, it could be a good idea to establish co-operation between families, school, and the children’s community.

Education in environmental matters must always include integrated solutions – both at the near, practical level, and at the higher, more visionary and idealistic, level. The students must feel that that solving environmental problems is both an individual and a joint, democratic matter. Especially the democratic aspect is very difficult for students to comprehend. Their opinion of the matter is, that garbage is not a joint, but an individual responsibility. The bottom line is that for environmental education to succeed, it is essential to involve the 12-year olds directly. The main reason for this is that at this age they start perceiving themselves as equal citizens. It is better to “speak up” than to “speak down” to them.

A cell phones life: from cradle to grave

Appeals to isolated, environmentally responsible actions only have a very small effect on changing children’s behavioural patterns. Children must first be provided with a deeper and closer comprehension of the character of environmental problems, or knowledge of aproduct’s lifecycle, for example a cell phone’s life from cradle to grave. The survey clearly shows that children can often answer the environmental questions correctly, but that they often do not know what to answer when asked about causal connections and consequences.

Children are major consumers. Due to this, it is a good idea to make this fact the starting point for making the children reflect on their own consumption and habits. Finally, other forms of education than the cognitive/intellectual must be considered – for instance interdisciplinary projects with more aesthetic and physical subjects.

Awarding, punishment and talking garbage bins

The students in the survey have many ideas as to how the problem of garbage could be solved. The possibility of rewarding and punishing people is a very central and dominant suggestion – for example deposit-return schemes for garbage like cans and bottles. However, there were a lot of other creative suggestions – bag machines for dog droppings, holes in pavements, talking garbage bins, animal-murder campaigns and anti-garbage rap songs are but a few. And last but not least: “I think someone should tell the people on the News that they should announce that from now on it is illegal to throw garbage.”

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