Today on my way to work I was walking behind two girls, maybe they were between 14 and 15 years old. One of them opened a can of Red Bull, snapped the opener off the bottle and threw it on the street. The small aluminum peace made a ding when it hit the asphalt.
This is in Sweden, in the city center, and the kids that, clearly, do not give a damn about the environment are cute, healthy little middleclass teens that shop sheep modern cloths made in Bangladesh from the big multinational companies that have their stores shattered across town.
Sweden is ranked to be one of the top counties on education and on environmental awareness today, but still kids here could very well be the fruit-selling canoe kids that I met on a boat in the Amazon a couple of years ago. When they had no more to sell they hang around upper deck for a while. My friend bought them soda and when they were finished they threw their empty cans in to the Amazon River like it was the most natural thing to do.
It felt like a mystery, that these kids, living in the world’s largest and most important ecosystem, could be so uninformed…but looking at the Swedish kids it might not be such a mystery after all. If not even these kids, with educated parents, money in their pockets and education of world class can grasp the importance of using a garbage can; we can come to the conclusion that Education for Sustainable Development faces huge challenges!
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