On the Trail of Future’s Eco-conscious Engilish Teachers: Recycling and Zero-waste Awarenesses and Practices of ELT Students

Sustainability in English Language Teaching (ELT) is a current paradigm that entails language education as a vehicle for empowering individuals to address environmental challenges on global platforms and to cultivate environmental consciousness and socially responsible mindsets. ELT teacher candidates have critical roles in shaping future generations’ habits for sustainability while teaching English as the ‘lingua franca’ language of globalisation. As educators-in-training, their personal sustainability habits, such as zero-waste and recycling, can reflect on their teaching strategies and set powerful examples for their students. This study explores ELT teacher candidates’ awareness and practices of zero-waste and recycling to reveal their attitudes towards sustainability. Two questionnaires were administered by 288 ELT students from three universities, and the outcomes were obtained through statistical analyses. The results showed that the overall zero-waste and recycling scores of participants was high, and significant differences were found due to age and gender.