ABSTRACT
At the heart of sustainability is the familiar theme that we should “reduce, reuse,
recycle.” This advice reminds us of the importance of not discarding materials
after a single use but instead, continually seeking ways that materials can be
productively reused and recycled. We are reminded of the need to move beyond
the throwaway culture that we have become. To perhaps a surprising extent, this
same theme of reuse and recycle also emerges in discussions on education for
sustainability. In the case of education, however, it is the recycling and reusing of
ideas, curricula, and best practices that is important, and it is the failure to draw
upon past insights that is lamented. The waste is pointed to when each group,
organization, and community individually reinvents the wheel, and, in so doing,
fails to reuse hard-won insights from the past.
