Current plight of the terrestrial life support system was reviewed in light of environmental education for future generations. The followings were among those discussed to be taught for turning the future of our humanosphere for the better: knowing both the Earth system and humanity; comprehending the consequence of temporal flow; and grasping the nature of time and space. LCA, giving powerful insight into what an existence in this transitory world is, must play a significant role in this endeavor. Areas in expectation of developments in this context were presented.

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A working group for environmental education was set up in the Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan in 2008. The working group aims at introduction of lifecycle thinking into conventional environmental education. This is because that lifecycle thinking is believed to be effective for consumers, particularly younger generations such as elementary and junior high school students, to recognize and cultivate a sense of values of environmentally-friendly life styles. The activities of the working group are: to collect information on environmental education of consumption or utilization of products and services, to discuss the practices of education with lifecycle thinking by working group members, and to publish guidelines on lifecycle thinking work books, as an outcome of the working group. This paper introduces the results of activities in a past fiscal year, with the background of environmental education.

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For creating a sustainable society, it is important to focus on the development of a sense of ethics in addition to the development of technologies and the formulation of regulations. Modern advanced technology society is built on complicated technology systems that are the “black box,” which causes the lack of awareness of links between daily consumption activities and global environmental problems. In order to recover the “missing link” in a cognitive sense, it is crucial to make consumers realize that consumption activities are parts of a system that is extensive in both time and space dimensions. Life cycle thinking is expected to be effective to recover the “missing link.” Based on such an idea, the author’s group has developed and implemented an environmental education program that highlights global warming.

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In order to establish a sustainable society, we should not turn our eyes away from large consumption of energies and materials. Science literacy is also an important parameter for understanding the influence of our life on the environment to take responsible action for it. A large number of programs for environmental education (EE) have been carried out at schools in Japan. There are many EE programs for energy issues, but the number of EE programs on materials consumption is very small. While activities on education for sustainable development (ESD) have been building up recent days, but there is little ESD program based on materials consumption as well. Our group have therefore developed a new EE program based on mobile phone technologies for the above two educational objectives, to recognize the influence of our life on the environment with respect to materials consumption and to gain science literacy on industrial products. In this paper, the outline of our program with its characteristics is described. The importance of EE based on industrial technologies is also discussed from the aspect of the potential of EE as a career education program as well as the development of human resources in Japan.

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The present paper reports the implementation of an environmental education program using LCA educational software “Global warming even in your bag?!” which was developed by Hondo laboratory, Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University. The program using the LCA educational software is very innovative in the sense that it can make students become aware of “life cycle” of products and feel global warming as their own problem. After implementing the program in a high school, students actually realized the importance of “life cycle thinking,” which had lacked for students before the class, and they learned that their daily behavior affects global warming. Based on experience in implementing the program, problems and future prospects regarding the use of the program in high schools are discussed. From viewpoints of the school curriculum，it is appropriate to implement this program based on life cycle thinking in the subject of geography and/or domestic science. The LCA educational software can play an important role in environmental education in high schools although it has some problems to be solved.

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The difficulty in encouraging environmentally-conscious actions for global environmental problems compared to those in local or regional scales is often pointed out. Why is this so? Global environmental problems differ from local or regional ones in an incomprehensibly vast amount of the resources input and wastes which affect the environment, making them difficult to link directly to our individual daily lives. Perhaps if we knew about the life cycles of the products we use every day, grasped the size of the issues, and understood the connection between global environmental problems and our individual lives, we would start to take actions that would help solve these problems. This is the reason why the author has provided environmental classes for children based on life cycle thinking since 2004. This article shall introduce two practical examples of environmental classes held in Singapore and Japan in September 2009. In the future I hope to continue to improve the contents of these classes, and to work with the cooperation of others involved in environmental education based on life cycle thinking to contribute to the general adoption of such education.

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Consumers are required to acknowledge the influence of their actions on the environment and understand the necessity for lifestyle changes to establish a sustainable society that maintains a balance between the environment and the economy. Since environmental awareness is believed to be a significant factor in changing consumer consciousness, the Society of Non-Traditional Technology and two other organizations have proposed an environmental education system for consumers, and have been holding training courses to cultivate eco-leaders in environmental education over a three-year period. This paper will introduce the necessary skills to become eco-leaders, the education programs and materials for eco-leaders, and the effectiveness and challenges of past workshops.

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Objective. Education is one of important and effective tactics to promote “sustainable consumption.” In a highly developed consumer society it is required that consumers notice and understand environmental impacts of their consumption and life styles. In order to induce individual sense of responsibility for environmental issues and motivation for environment-friendly life style, it is important to make consumers understand the “link” between their life styles and global environmental problems such as global warming. Thus, the use of the concept of “life cycle thinking” in environmental education is expected to be effective. The authors have developed a novel environmental education program using LCA software “Global warming even in your bag?!” that runs on a personal computer and is easy to handle. This program can make learners recognize how much life cycle CO₂ was emitted from their own daily lives as well as how effectively they can reduce it by changing their behavior. The objective of the present study is to analyze psychological mechanism which forms the intention of pro-environmental behavior of students after implementing the developed program in junior high and high schools.
Results and Discussion. The program was implemented in four school classes. Questionnaire surveys were conducted after each class to investigate the realization of the “link,” the change in psychological factors (e.g. sense of responsibility), and the change in behavioral intention towards environment conservation. The survey data indicates that the students strongly recognized the “link,” and increased sense of responsibility, perceived effectiveness and behavioral intention etc. Analyses of the survey data suggest that the recognition of the “link” between daily life and CO₂ emission based on life cycle thinking seems to increase sense of responsibility and perceived effectiveness, and then the two factors seem to induce the formation of behavioral intention.
Conclusion. The use of “life cycle thinking” as a core concept in environmental education can help induce individual sense of responsibility for global warming as well as perceived effectiveness of behavioral change. In addition, the use of the LCA software also is effective to induce behavioral change because it can supply learners with the tailored information on current life cycle CO₂ emission and allows for the virtual experiences to reduce life cycle CO₂ emission.

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Objective. This study developed a new environmental education program calculating the Carbon Footprint (CFP) of cabbage grown in Choshi city, Chiba prefecture. CFP is expected to be an environmental communication tool used to visualize the amount of CO₂ emission by human activities. CFP can assists consumers in achieving sustainable consumption if they are provided information on the amount of CO₂ emitted through the whole life cycle of products. While is important to establish a low carbon society, it is difficult to comprehend how our daily life is linked to global environmental problems through CO₂ emission. This disconnected situation is called the “missing link”. The presented educational program aimed to recover the “missing links”.
Method. This program was applied to 33 junior high school students in Choshi city. This program consists of a forty minute lecture, a sixty minute cooking experiment, and a fifty minute group work presentation and discussion. The lecture is a brief overview of the cabbage life cycle and the calculation method of CFP. The life cycle of cabbage is defined as the following eight stages, cultivation, yield, storage, transportation, selling, refrigeration, cooking and disposal stages. CFP was calculated by the addition of the amount of CO₂ emission in each life cycle stage. The students choose from a standard set of transportation, refrigeration, cooking and disposal stages scenarios, and consider ways of improving their scenarios. In the cooking experiment, students measure the amount of CO₂ emission for various cooking methods, e.g. LPG range, induction heater, electric heater and microwave. The calculated results of CFP are presented and discussed along with CFP reduction methods. The effects of this program are evaluated by a questionnaire and an analysis of student’s descriptions.
Results and Discussion. The results of the group discussion and presentation showed that the students became more conscious of the CO₂ emission from their daily life, and realized the connection between the CO₂ emissions and the global environmental problems. Analyses on the data from the questionnaires indicated that this program was effective in making students recognize the “link” between their daily life and CO₂ emissions. An analysis of students’ descriptions showed that an awareness of “perceived effectiveness” and “a sense of responsibility” resulted in enhancing behavioral intension of environmental action.
Conclusions. The use of CFP in environmental education programs was considered effective in addressing the recovery of the “missing link” between global environmental problems based on CO₂ emissions and our daily life, as well as modifying environmental action. It was important for students to be “facilitators” in promoting discussions appropriately. Adjusting system boundaries appropriately, this program could be highly effective for various education levels from elementary school to college.

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Background and Goal. For establishing a sustainable society, one of important parameters in considering the effects of Environmental Education (EE) is to recognize our material world with literacy on science. Our group has developed a new program for EE related with this. Our program should provide an opportunity for students to recognize that our life strongly influences on the environment with respect to large consumption of materials and energies. The goal of our program is their understanding of this picture with acquisition of science literacy related with industrial products. Outline of the program: The program is composed of several parts according to four learning steps, awareness, knowledge, recognition and understanding. This program was carefully designed from the standpoint of a life-cycle of products. Mobile phone, which is becoming an ordinary product in our daily life, plays a key role in our program. It is used as a material for introduction, and its three components, plastics, semi-conductors and batteries were determined as the particular educational subjects related with science literacy. The unit for these subjects includes both a lecture based part and a group work. A factory tour was also incorporated as an extramural learning opportunity. The students reconsider the life cycle of a mobile phone and their daily lives at the conclusion of the program.
Results and Discussion. The whole program was successfully designed and the corresponding educational materials have been developed. Among three units for the particular part, the details of the materials on plastics are described with the introduction and conclusion parts on mobile phone in this report. The developed program was put in practice at several high schools in Tokyo and Kanagawa prefectures from 2007 to 2008. A questionnaire survey was employed in order to evaluate the educational effects of the program by using multiple-choice and free-description methods. The result indicated that almost all the students had been aware the link between their daily lives and the environment with acquisition of new knowledge and recognition on a mobile phone and plastics. Conclusions and Perspectives: A new EE program focusing on material world and science literacy have been developed using mobile phone as an example. The intended educational effects of the program including the plastic unit were confirmed in its practice at several high schools. Development of the materials for the other two units, semi-conductors and batteries, are now in progress and their details will be reported elsewhere with their educational effects.

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Objective. Livestock wastewater from pig farmer is generally treated by activated sludge process. However, it turns to brownish color (colored piggery wastewater). Before discharging colored piggery wastewater, it is necesarry to decolorize. Colored piggery wastewater can decolorize by ozone treatment or ultraviolet treatment. However they need a lot of electricity, they will have a lot of CO₂ emission and high environmental loads. Authors researched and developed the decolorization system by electrolysis. From the results of pilot test, Authors evaluated that it can utilize for decolorization. In this study, Authors carried out Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for electrolysis, ozone and NaClO decolorization system. In LCA, at first, making input and output data such as resources for machine and chemicals and electricity for each decolorization system clearer, and inventory analysis was carried out. However, there is no LCA report for ozone generation system, rescorces for ozone generation sysytem was unknown. Authors reffered CO₂, NO_x and SO_x generation from 3 EID as output datas for inventory analysis. From the result of inventory analysis, Authors evaluated the generation of CO₂, NO_x and SO_x. And then Life Cycle Impact Assessment was carried out using by Life-cycle Impact-assessment Method based on End point modeling (LIME).
Results and Discussion. From the result of inventry analysis, CO₂ emission of electrolyzed-decolorization, ozone-decolorization and NaClO decolorization that delocolize 10t colored piggery wastewater in a day were indicated 3.37×10¹kg-CO₂, 5.26×10¹kg-CO₂ and 3.51×10¹kg-CO₂, respectively. NO_x emission were indicated 1.88×10^-2kg-NO_x, 3.42×10^-2kg-NO_x and 7.07×10^-2kg-NO_x, respectively. SO_x emission were indicated 6.36×10^-3kg-SO_x, 1.31×10^-2kg-SO_x and 1.20×10^-2kg-SO_x, respectively. The influence of electrolyzd decoroization system was the smallest in the result of Human Health, however, it was the largest Social Asset, Biodiversity and Primary Production. It has became chear that the influence of global warming and urban area air pollution on electrolyzed decolorization was the smallest. However, electrolyzed decolorization needs many titanium electrodes. The results of LCIA, the influence of resource consumption in electrolyzed decolorization was largest. The result of Single Index, Ozone decolorization system showed the smallest value. In case of setting up electrolyzed decolorization system instead of ozone decolorization system in 45% farmer, it indicated that a lot of CO₂, NO_x and SO_x emission would control.$$br$$
Conclusion. This study carried out life cycle evaluation for electrolyzed decolorization system, ozone decolorization system and NaClO decolorization system. It has examined CO₂, NO_x and SO_x emissions in Electrolyzed decolorization system were the smallest, however the influence of resouce consumption was largest.

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