Waste management is a huge issue facing our world today, and The Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education has created curriculum to help communicate this issue effectively to our most important assets – our children. With lessons for students in K-12th grade, the TerraCycle Curriculum presents the concept of waste and how we can eliminate it. The lessons operate under the fact that “waste” doesn’t actually exist – there is no magical “away” where things go when you “throw them away.” Besides teaching this concept, the lessons also ensure our next generation is ready to solve this issue, by drawing inspiration from nature – biomimicry.

Where in this is environmental education? In most cases, non existent. This is a problem—How can we expect the children of today to be capable stewards of our troubled planet when they don't have the basic knowledge of what's going on, what their role is, and what they can do? That's why I'm really proud to have launched the free TerraCycle Curriculum <http://www.terracycle.net/curriculums/overview> , with a lot of help from the preeminent sustainability education designer Cloud Institute <http://www.sustainabilityed.org/> . What is it? Well let me start with what it's not: Another rehashing of the basics of, let's face it, how to be a "better consumer." Don't get me wrong, of course I'm in support of more people making greener purchase choices, recycling, using CFLs, etc. But that's being covered everywhere you look these days, in all manner of media. What kids need is a solid foundation of environmental knowledge, that can be applied in the rest of their lives—From where they live, play and work, to what they create at work and then what they do with it at the end of its useful life. From there, they can apply it to help shape the world in a positive way, rather then feeling like a victim of it.