<p>The profound and devastating global impact of climate change has increasingly garnered consensus among humanity, establishing its status as one of the foremost challenges of the forthcoming decades. Within this context, the role of education has emerged as a potent catalyst for societal transformation and collaborative endeavors, offering an effective avenue to address the issue at hand. Concurrently, the evolution of educational technology presents exhilarating prospects for educators and learners alike. In this empirical inquiry, employing waste sorting (an effective measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow down climate change) instruction as a probe, we conducted a meticulously designed experiment to assess the efficacy of an augmented reality (AR) system in facilitating pedagogy and empowering students to combat climate change. We investigated the effect of the AR system on awareness and action intention of waste classification from two dimensions: knowledge acquisition and technical acceptance. The results showed that immersive AR instruction enhanced climate change education, mainly in terms of facilitating knowledge acquisition, enhancing response efficacy to cope with climate change, and fostering positive attitudes towards climate change. Participants gradually assimilated waste sorting into their daily behavioral repertoire by engaging with the AR system and forming behavioral memories. This endeavor amalgamates distinctive experiential modules with futuristic showcases, engendering an unparalleled educational experience that affirms participants’ knowledge acquisition and nurtures an unquenchable curiosity that transcends limitations. Furthermore, our study encourages students to embrace daily actions towards climate change mitigation and serves as a valuable reference and aid in developing AR-assisted education.</p>