The main goal of our project was to develop long-term skills, abilities and habits for all participants in this initiative to reduce their impact on the environment. We had two objectives: O1.To foster clear awareness of, and concern about the ecological impact in all participants; O2.To create waste separation and resource saving habits in all participants to this initiative. In the simplest terms, habits are actions that we repeat regularly without thinking about it – usually every day. According to psychologists, it takes repeating actions over more than 60 days for them to turn into habits. Based on this idea, our purpose was to create a school environment that supported the development of positive habits in relation with the environment. There are many isolated actions and activities in each school, but what if we could gather all our efforts into one strategy that could create and maintain these habits. A healthy habit could also be transferred in the home environment of the future adult.Another very important specific objective was to empower young people,encourage them to become the voices of environment initiatives, with more success in the communication with other groups of young people.
Next Step started at the initiative of the coordinator with the purpose to address a need for ecology education for students. It was a call for local collaboration of the municipality and the waste management unit, but we needed good examples, strategies that worked. After the analysis of studies about circular economy results in other countries, the best solution was to exchange experiences with schools and local waste management units in other European countries, so as to improve local initiatives everywhere, discover strategies and transmit good practices to local public administrations. After a public call for partners on eTwinning, it was clear that this was not just a singular need. All the chosen partners had their strengths and weaknesses and were willing to share and improve. This is how we reached the team of schools from Germany, Italy, Poland, Greece, together with the coordinating school from Romania. We started by asking our students, in a short questionnaire, about their waste management habits at home and it was clear that the official data about the percentage of waste that was collected separately for each partner country were not wrong: 64% Germany, 16% Romania, 20% Greece, 32% Poland, 46% Italy.