Educational Materials on Sustainability, Circular Economy and Bioeconomy for Schools, Colleges and Universities

Abstract

A key aim of BE-Rural is to increase awareness and understanding of bioeconomy, sustainability and circular economy through education. This report includes a variety of educational resources that can be used by teachers. It is possible to envisage that geography, biology, environmental studies, technology and/or business classes could integrate some of these resources as part of their teaching, but it is up to the teachers to decide how they are best used. The bioeconomy is the production of goods, services or energy using biological material as the main resource, instead of the use of fossil resources. As the bioeconomy uses renewable and biodegradable resources, it can avoid the depletion of resources and waste is often completely designed out of the system. The European Union is taking steps towards a sustainable bioeconomy and has a strategy to promote the bioeconomy and to avoid reaching ecological limits. The sustainability implications of the bioeconomy, and of specific bio-based products, permeates all the learning materials and explicit reference is often made to the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The material covered in this report is mostly aimed at teachers of high school pupils (in the 12-18 age range) in Bulgaria, Latvia, North Macedonia, Poland and Romania to help them teach their pupils on bioeconomy, circular economy and sustainability. To facilitate this, the material in this report is translated into Bulgarian, Latvian, Macedonian, Polish and Romanian. The educational materials in this report also aim to promote the participation in the development of regional bioeconomy strategies, which is the overall aspiration of BE-Rural. The educational resources build upon a "strong sustainability" approach, with avoidance of trade-offs between social, economic and environmental issues. This fits with the ecological limits advocated by the European bioeconomy strategy. This report presents the four main outputs in terms of high school education ...