Chapter 8: Social Work and Environmental Sustainability Toolkit: Building a Practical Guide to Apply Sustainable Practices in Social Work

In this chapter, students from a Portuguese university address the relationship between social work and environmental sustainability using a pragmatic approach: the construction of a toolkit as a practical guide for the application of sustainable practices and projects in social work. The chapter describes the construction of the toolkit, which was developed using a literature review, presentations from experts in the field of sustainability, and six webinars which inform the six topics of the toolkit: “Environmental Social Work in the Community”, “Social Work and the Circular Economy”, “Food Security, Sustainability, and Social Work”, “Social Work and Environmental Education”, “The Human-Animal as an Element in Social Work”, and “Social Work in Environmental Disaster”. Each chapter starts with a theoretical view of the subject and finishes with a presentation of case studies. It is intended that this practical guide for the application of sustainability in the social sector may become a reference tool for students and professionals who want to develop academic work or social projects with an environmental sustainability component.