"...more than by things that everyday are produced

sold bought, the opulence of Leonia is measured by things

that everyday are thrown away to give place to

the new ones."

Italo Calvino

Life, and consequently the humankind survival, develops inside the ecosystems ruled by dynamic balances; knowledge and understanding of these balances should involve an even more close analysis of the causes which determine situations of criticality.

Since different decades, the scientists and the most careful part of society have detected the beginning of new environmental phenomena on a worldwide scale able to change the balances that allow to be alive, and the necessity to quickly act to face the causes of those critical situations.

Because of their close relation to the different forms of pollution and because of their modality of production, "waste" is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of the environmental emergency on which the social attention has been focused, on global and local levels.
In fact, negative effects of the goods' local production could pass a limited territorial ambit and have repercussions on other parts of the planet.

By now waste emergency attacks on different aspects: rubbish collection, separation system, recycling, dump, environmental changes, hygiene, aesthetic horror, which could seem not important but it also has its moderate value.

Main elements of this phenomenon's beginning are the population increase, the economical development models, and above all the prevailing habits and lifestyles. Waste heaps are directly proportional to the richness of a population from a quantitative point of view, while considering a qualitative aspect (goods usage) it comes into play the consumer goods' indiscriminate purchasing, caused and aggravated by the advertising techniques, which make imaginary needs appear as actual ones in order to continuously extend the production, it is a classic for the industrialized societies.

An economic system organized in this way, implicates a deep weakness: that is to say producing goods without care, in most cases, about their reutilization or recovery after using them.
A different cultural approach could outline a kind of goods fruition that drives the humankind to a more careful use of resources which cannot be renewed from nature and to the planning of projects that would be able to become goods again, thanks to the modern technologies' help and the legislative aid.
Since many years there have been attempts to modify the concept of waste, interpreted as an object without any function as a resource. Through complex chemical-physical processes a new identity is given to different materials: clocks that are produced thanks to the by-products of aluminium, batteries by bottles, paper by paper, fertilizer by organic waste.

Urban waste corresponds to one third on the total of produced waste. There could be the separate collection of household waste or the undifferentiated collection and the waste can be also given directly from the citizen to the equipped Ecological Stations.
It also exists a market on an high level for all the recyclable things, the ones that can be dismantled and reused. Unimaginable objects and materials which are exchanged, sold, bought. There are tools, furnitures, jewels and accessories, generally speaking, which are made by recycling materials: plastic cups and glass pots that become lamps, bottles caps used to realize frames and watches, plastic bags that are transformed into dresses, and also, old toys that become proper sculptures; tables, chairs, sofas made by sponge, cardboard, metal, and the list could be endlessly. Nowadays, the field of art has literally been invaded by all the recyclable things; the largest international expos on contemporary art give great importance to the artists that create their works of art thanks to recyclable materials, and moreover, in Italy numerous are the initiatives linked to the art developed in the metropolis and which focused on the waste to have an eco-sustainability philosophy about society and cities where we live. Recycling is realized in painting works, sculptures, collages and installations which, thanks to a perspective's reversal and in the wake of an established contemporary art trend, opened by great people as Picasso and Rauschenberg, recover the "waste" and, transform it from waste products into productive and functional materials for the art expression.

Nowadays more than ever, there is a process that could be defined as a "materialmorphosis", and so, waste that is seemingly useless is then transformed into new resources and all those materials that are doomed to disappear, who knows where, are useful again.

It is necessary to regain a culture of the "material" and diffuse it. Knowing the history of the objects often gives a different dignity and more respect to them. This is possible in an environmental education project that considers waste from multiple aspects and this is the purpose of the intervention in the school and in the territory.

In this context it is included a synergetic work, which would involve, in addition to the Municipalities and the companies that manage waste services, the schools for first, seen as educational agencies, children and, indirectly, the families and the whole population.

Moreover, it has to be highlight that the correct management of waste recycling, that involves directly the habits and the lifestyles of citizens, is definitely based on a diffuse cultural perception about the importance of collective participation to the realization of the aim, in order to increase, as much as possible, the percentage of waste that has to be recycled.

In this sense, contemporary art is a strong instrument that allows, without any doubt, to diffuse a cultural sensibility on which new and virtuous collective and individual behaviours could be based, in a large strata of population, beginning from the young people that have to be immediately clear the necessity to actively act for the waste recycling.

Hence, the project aims to create a relations system, focused on young generations, who are the beneficiaries and protagonists at the same time of any stage of the project, in order to make the involved actors reflect upon their actions and the effect of these actions on the community.