For years, environmental protection has been a hot topic worldwide. Many famous people, including Sting and Leonardo DiCaprio, have made a great contribution to making this topic truly relevant and ever-present with their efforts in the area of environmental protection. The media, ecological guidelines and activists are making sure the importance of environmental protection is never disputed. And if we don’t dispute its relevance, then we can make a huge difference. Global warming, the environment and ecological awareness are becoming increasingly important topics, but the question is whether we behave in an eco-conscious manner and, if so, to what extent. Our ecological awareness can be seen in the way we treat the environment, how much we avoid packed products, plastic bags, whether we buy fewer products of a greater quality that can last longer and to what extent we strive to inspire others to do the same.

Today, we can contribute to raising ecological awareness and improving environmental protection through education, pedagogical work and training at schools. Although our primary and secondary education curricula entail raising ecological awareness, existing methods have proven inefficient. Clearly, students don’t find reading articles on global warming in English and writing essays on environmental protection particularly appealing. Not only do they find those activities dull, but they also do not gain interest in protecting the environment. On the other hand, if given practical advice on how to change their everyday habits, the students are usually willing to do so. Perhaps they would try to save paper, recycle plastic bottles and aluminium cans, use a single shopping bag multiple times if someone were to teach them to do so. This is precisely the reason we argue that adult education can contribute to raising ecological awareness and improving environmental protection.

Peace, safety and security are the necessary preconditions for environmental protection. Those factors enable us to make the right choices and decisions. Our society has to show the readiness to do something to give us all a chance to contribute to protecting our environment. Separating glass, plastic and paper, not selling plastic bags and stimulating recycling practices are standard procedures in the modern world. However, special attention should be paid to educating adults on the subject. If adults are informed about certain events or decisions in the area of environmental protection, they may become interested in the subject and they may want to participate, share information and behave in an eco-conscious manner. Today, as we read the news and browse social networks, we often come across various environmental protection events. Amongst them was the Plant a Tree campaign, which applied an innovative method for raising awareness. Thanks to the campaign, over 50.000 trees were planted. This action is a form of adult education in the area of ecology because tree planting is a very useful action against climate change. Such actions and methods should be applied as much as possible, as they are the means to educate adults on sustainable development, the consequences of consumerism and environmental protection. In addition to planting trees, pedestrian tours including cleaning the environment would be effective too. A well-thought-out event, offering an opportunity to socialize and spend time in nature, would motivate people to contribute to cleaning the environment. Practical outdoor events are better than events during which we only talk about certain environmental protection measures. For instance, an efficient event could be organised in the woods, where adults could have some outdoor activities including discussing ecology, planting trees and walking. Also, an innovative approach could include monthly tasks, which would stimulate the participants to do something for the environment every single day of the month. For example, recycling plastic could be the first task, buying a water bottle to avoid using plastic bottles could be the next task and so on. Therefore, they would have a task to fulfil each day until the next workshop. The improvement of ecological education and individual awareness would be the aims of the workshop.

We are all aware of the fact that adults must act environmentally-friendly. This is the only way to inspire the children and steer them in the right direction by developing their environmental awareness and willingness to recycle, share information and participate in projects and workshops. Let’s bear that in mind and work on improving our health and environment!