Waste is high up on the list when evaluations been done over the seriousness, size and trend of environmental aspects in the municipality of Östersund, Sweden. Environmental inspections are of need to reduce waste and reach a higher extent of waste separation. The board of environment and society have given the inspection authority the assignment to carry out a waste treatment project to evaluate if food operations fulfill the legislation demands on how to handle their waste in purpose of improving waste separation and reducing food waste. The environmental legislation in Sweden obliges everyone to prevent that people’s health and the environment gets negatively affected by the activities done. The legislation also obliges everyone to decrease, reuse and recycle waste. 29 food operations, who had the highest amount of registered food containers, have been inspected and interviewed with a questioning form and brochures with information and suggestions on how to separate waste and decrease food waste have been given out. Only two operations deviated from the legislation. There were ten operations that hade a complete separation of waste. 21 operations believed that the waste handling could improve and 13 operations where already working with reducing the amount of waste. All operations were working with reducing food waste and wanted to be able to minimize it even more. The outcome was positive with willingness to improve. But the awareness of legislation was low and the knowledge of why work is needed for the environment must get higher.

The Creative Solutions to Waste Project (CSW) is a local environmental education project, involving five Grahamstown schools, the local municipality; community members and the Rhodes University Environmental Education Unit, where I worked at the time this study was undertaken. In this research I explore the use of environmental education learning support materials (LSM) in Outcomes Based Education (OBE). I have employed a participatory action research approach informed by critical theory in this case study of the Creative Solutions to Waste project (CSW). The research focused on the ‘Waste Education’ materials and their use, developed and piloted during the pilot phase. The Waste Education materials were also used in phase one. In phase two, the research focused on the use of ‘Health and Water’ learning support materials in 4 Grahamstown schools. Research participants included educators, support team members, municipal officials, Department of Education officials, Department of Health (Eastern Cape) officials, the Health Promoting Schools committee and NGO representatives. I employed a range of data collection strategies including questionnaires, observations, field notes, semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, workshops, reflective journal, videotapes, and photographs and documents analysis. The research process was collaboratively discussed and agreed upon by all the participants. This research indicated that the purpose influences the use of LSM. It also indicated the importance of mediation processes in the use of LSM. This study indicates that the designs of LSM and particular views of learning influence the way LSM are used. It does that by looking at how an active learning framework influenced the use of learning support materials and consequent learning processes. It also highlights the significance of paying attention to issues of language and literacy in the design of LSM, and how these factors influence the use of LSM. It also identified the tension between prescriptive and open-ended processes to professional development in supporting the use of LSM in contexts of curriculum change and transformation. This study also indicated the importance of reflexive processes to improve support process in the CSW project by demonstrating how the contributions and the roles of the support team were reflexively changed. I have reviewed the research processes in relation to the research design decisions made at the start of the project. This study lastly offers some recommendations for further research into the use of LSM, and how an understanding of LSM use may influence the development of LSM.

The proper way to manage biological waste has only recently become a topic of discussion and the public still does not have enough information about it and does not have a comprehensive opinion. In order for bio-waste to be properly managed, knowledge of this topic and positive attitude towards it is necessary, in class this could be achieved by activating pupils through project based education. Teaching in projects is a great way to understand the issue, which can influence pupils' attitudes towards bio-waste management. The aim of this diploma thesis is to create a project on the topic of biodegradable waste, and then to find out how the knowledge and opinions of students about bio-waste have changed. The created project was verified at the lower secondary school, for which it is primarily intended. A total of 54 6th-year pupils was involved in this project. They were given a pretest before the start of the project, finding out the initial knowledge about bio-waste and their opinion on the classification of bio-waste. After the project, the pupils completed a posttest and by comparing the individual answers, it was determined whether and how the knowledge of the tested pupils and their attitude towards the topic changed. The answers of individual pupils in the pretest and posttest were evaluated...