Project Zero Waste - Sweden week - Valsätraskolan

On October 2nd, Valsätraskolan in Sweden had the honor to host the first week in our zero-waste project. It was a week full of new experiences, friendships and learning outcomes. Our idea for this week was to have a mix between field trips to different places in our nearby area and workshops in school. This is what happened in Uppsala: 

Monday

All our guests came to the school in the morning. After a welcomes peech from our principal we had some team building activities at the school. In Sweden all students get free school lunch so we had lunch at school before we took a walk downtown for the afternoon activities. 

Here is the Swedish team: 

Afternoon: City tour in old town Uppsala with mixed groups and tasks to complete around town. 

Here is the whole group in Uppsala botanical garden: 

Tuesday

Bus from Uppsala to Eskilstuna

First, we visited Retuna secondhand shopping mall. There we got a showing of the mall and the history behind it. Then, the students could walk around and look for themselves at all the things you could buy.

After a lucnh stop the bus took us to Eskilstuna recycling center. The recycling center is famous in Sweden for its unique way of sorting out the waste. With optic cameras the sort out the waste which comes in bags with different colours. We got a showing around the center and then we went back to Uppsala. The most memorable moment for the students was probably the smell... 

Wednesday

The day started at 09:00 and we had a whole classroom for ourselvs. For the morning session we had planned a exercise from our school's sustainable development day. One week per year, our school organises a sustainable development week for all our students. This exercise was about sustainable packaging. The students worked with different products and made a poster about how the packaging of that product could be more sustainable. The learning outcome was to reflect on how packaging can be improved in ways of sustainablilty and recycling.

Here is some examples of the posters: 

Afternoon: After some school lunch we started the big group project about sustainable cities. This assignment was created by WWF and it’s called “Eight City Lives”. Each group did research about one city and made a presentation about how their city is working towards being more sustainable.

Thursday

Field trip - Bus from Uppsala to Stockholm

Sightseeing in Stockholm in mixed group to visit all the famous landmarks in old town Stockholm. 

This was the assignment for all the groups: 

Lunch in Stockholm

Afternoon - Visit to the National Museum of Science and technology - Exhibition Zero City. The students learned about how cities can develop in a sustainable way towards becoming climate neutral. The presentation could be in any form and the aim was to persuade us that their town was the best town in terms of working with becoming more sustainable. Here is one example of a presentation about Cape Town: 

Friday

Last day together at school and the students worked in their groups to finish the group projects.

Lunch at school

After lunch, we went together to buy food to make dinner in our home economics classrooms. Every country made something that represented their country. We called it "Cultural dinner". 

Then we had a goodbye party with food from each country, presentations of the group projects and some dancing at the end. The evening ended with handing out diplomas to all the students.

A video of how it looked like in the home economics classroom: 

The last picture with everyone (except the Estonian team who had to catch the flight back to Tallinn): 

 

Overall, the week went on well and the evaluation of the mobility showed that the students and teachers were very satisfied with the activities. Over and out from the Swedish team!