WEEE R Robots has been developed within the InnoWEEE EIT Climate KIC Project and focuses on awareness-raising and education on the reduction, re-use, and recycling of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) through playful educational activities that involve the entire school community.

WEEE R Robots campaigns aim at raising the school community’s (students 6-14, families, teachers and school staff) awareness with respect to sustainable EEE/WEEE habits. The campaign is structured as a school challenge, where schools compete in EEE/WEEE collection. The primary target of the campaign are children, which are the citizens of the future and at the same time the most effective mean to involve families and the school staff.

Primary school children collect and categorize their used EEE / WEEE at home with help from their family members. At school, thanks to a Web App, all objects collected are registered in the platform and contribute to earning virtual credits. The Web App helps distinguish between functioning objects, repairable objects and waste and guides children and teachers through the correct management process. The accumulated credits allow the class to build a virtual robot. Thanks to the participation of the whole school, a team of robots will be created that will “clean the world of waste”. The Web App also provides immediate feedback on the impact achieved through the collection campaign and provides teachers with educational multimedia material that can be used in the classroom. The residual value of functioning and repairable objects can be used by the school to purchase refurbished hardware resources.

The first WEEE R robots campaign took place from April until June 2019 at the primary school M. K. Gandhi within the Rovereto Municipality (Trentino, Italy). Thanks to the success of the first campaign, in terms of students’ motivation, participation and impact, two other schools in Trentino (Arcivescovile in Rovereto and Silvio Pellico in Besenello) decided to participate in the WEEE R robots from December 2019 to January 2020. Finally, another school, Tovazzi primary school in Volano, decided to run the campaign from November 2020 to January 2021. 

About 800 children and their families were involved in these 4 school campaigns. Together, they manage to collect 3.806 electronic items (1493 AEE and 2313 RAEE).