Interest in plant-based diets has grown among various age groups in industrialized countries, including adolescents (Eurispes, 2019; Cramer et al., 2017; Mensink et al., 2016; Ponzio et al., 2015). These dietary regimes often represent a philosophy of life: ethical vegetarians are mainly supported by moral reasons, such as animal welfare, non-violence, equality, respect for differences, and the idea that they can contribute to reducing environmental pollution or world hunger.

Despite the increasing rates of vegetarianism in industrialized countries, there are few studies analyzing the phenomenon with specific reference to adolescents (Del Ciampo & Lopes Del Ciampo, 2019; Patelakis et al., 2019; Orlich et al., 2019). One of the first studies on this topic (Wright & Howcroft, 1992) found that emotional reasons associated with animal welfare, rather than health, are the basis of being vegetarian among adolescents.

Adolescence is a critical developmental period characterized by transitioning from a diet controlled primarily by parents towards a more self-directed diet. Food choices allow adolescents to assert themselves, build their identity, and form their values.

Numerous studies have investigated the relationship between vegetarian nutrition and health in developmental age, demonstrating that if the diet is well monitored and managed balanced, there is no risk associated with vegetarian regimes (Tosatti, Doria, 2021; Eurispes, 2019). Several studies showed benefits such as reduced overweight risks, diabetes onset, cardiovascular diseases, and some cancers (Lemale et al., 2019; Lee & Park, 2017; Matthews et al., 2011; Sabaté & Wien, 2010; American Dietetic Association, 2003). Moreover, findings suggest that adopting a vegetarian lifestyle during adolescence, characterized by a diet abundant in fruits, vegetables, legumes, eggs, and milk, can yield lasting benefits for bone health in adulthood (Movassagh et al., 2018).

On the other hand, concerns have surfaced regarding potential nutritional deficiencies in vegetarian diets (Ferrara et al., 2017; McEvoy et al., 2012). In response to these concerns, numerous scientific pediatric associations warned that successfully providing a complete vegetarian diet for young people requires substantial commitment, expert guidance, planning, resources, and supplementation (Kiely, 2021).

From everything explained, it follows that adolescents who adopt a vegetarian diet must be guided and supported by their adult reference figures. Supporting adolescents who choose vegetarianism involves understanding and respecting their decisions, providing information, addressing nutritional concerns, and creating an environment that respects and accommodates their dietary preferences.

Education can contribute to the development of well-informed and empowered adolescents who are capable of making conscious and healthy dietary choices, including vegetarianism.

The contribution aims to reflect, in particular, on the potential role of schools in accompanying adolescents in making conscious choices regarding nutrition, respecting their health, the environment, and living beings.

In Laudato Si' Pope Francis invites us to join forces to face the ecological crisis in continuity with what was decided by the UN within the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda. Laudate Deum (2023) draws the attention of the international community to what little is being done in the ecological field and how a radical paradigm transformation is necessary that puts the common good and man understood as part of a nature that includes him back at the center (GreenComp, 2022): «life, intelligence and the freedom of man are inserted into the nature that enriches our planet and are part of its internal forces and its balance" (LD, 26). Having lost the status of an emergency condition due to the diachronicity of the debate created, Jonas already envisaged an "ecological catastrophe" (2002) dictated by the technocratic paradigm; it becomes necessary to rethink the environment as a man-nature relationship according to an ecosophical model. Humanity participates both in the dimension of action and in that of reception, in a reciprocity that has as its motivating pivot the relationship of care (ecosophical paradigm) or mere power (technocratic paradigm). Education fulfills the task of accompaniment between generations, where the adult and the young recognize themselves as parts of a land that is mother (or stepmother) and consequently together they create and attempt actions of custody (or exploitation) in the time of the present, the only time of concrete exercise of thought and possibility of action. The educational responsibility of adults and the sustainable responsibility of adolescents emerges as an urgent need in the face of the demanding reality. The place of accompaniment seems to be this perpetual, confused and unresolved oscillation between question and answer, between the appeal of the earth (the cry of the poor, of nature, of young people) and the search for always precarious and provisional solutions. It is not possible to assume any practice of investigation and political participation that has the characteristics of methodological rigidity, of the mere vertical transmission of knowledge based on the private auctoritas of dialogue and of intellectual asymmetry.

Philosophy for Children (P4C) represents an innovative approach in planning, risky and revolutionary because it is capable of making complex thinking flourish (Lipman 2005) which is simultaneously critical, creative and caring and which only makes sense in a community sense in a progressive democratic protagonism which knows no hierarchies except that of free thought.

In 2023, an Integral Ecology Laboratory was created in Padua with a group of teenagers and two secondary school teachers who, starting from the practice of P4C, questioned themes such as sustainability, ecology, responsibility, commitment and citizenship which generated actions recognized within the Festival of Sustainable Development promoted by AsVIS. The adult’s posture in this specific practice is dedicated to listening and facilitation, within a context where each member is free and confident in being able to make their own specific contribution, knowing that their point of view will be valued by translating it and in enabling actions (Sen 1994).

The concept of sustainable development has changed considerably in recent years, taking on increasingly complex meanings over time. A document that contributed to its definition is The Global Agenda for Sustainable Development and the relative 17 Goals to be achieved by 2030, approved in 2015 by the United Nations. The concept of sustainability, as defined in the document, is characterized by three definitions: economic, environmental and social. These three concepts should allow us to «transit from anthropocentric ethics, which attributes to nature an instrumental value measurable in economic terms, to ecocentric ethics which is recognized as having an intrinsic value» (Dozza, 2019:195). For this to be possible, it is necessary to promote a real cultural change capable of supporting a sustainability mindset (Kassel et al., 2016; Hermes, Rimanoczy, 2018; Rimanoczy, 2021), i.e. a radical change of views, attitudes and behaviors in relation to the ecosystem.

The promotion of a sustainability mindset by teachers requires the initiation of learning that meets the criteria of lifelong, lifewide and lifedeep learning to develop strategies and offer adequate educational responses to current problems, adopting paths capable of directing behavior of learners towards a personal and collective commitment (Bornatici, 2021). To achieve these objectives, it is appropriate for the territory to become a shared space of permanent learning in which formal and informal experiences become conditions for well-being (Pignalberi, 2021); it is therefore essential to first deconstruct and then reconstruct the place of learning. It is about promoting an 'ecological conscience' capable of reflecting on the indissoluble link that exists between the identity of the individual and the surrounding environment (Quarta, 2006: 134).

The intent of this contribution is to analyze the relationship that exists between one of the educational methodologies with a high connective potential, Outdoor Education (OE) and adolescents. For years the outdoors, not to be considered as simple open-air teaching, but as the possibility of producing new relationships, has been put aside to favor training courses carried out strictly indoors, thus denying its high educational value (Xodo, 2019).

The affinity between OE and adolescent evolutionary dynamics are quite evident, in this regard we refer to a suggestive and fascinating image «going out, [...] represents the identifying feature of this age of life» (Bortolotto, 2020:115). The attempt to 'get out' symbolically represents the difficulty of adolescents in finding their own space, their own identity, therefore, their own range of action; they experience firsthand the contradiction of the terms 'inside/outside', on the one hand the certainties of the inside, but at the same time also the dissatisfaction that derives from it, on the other the desire to explore the outside which, however, is accompanied by fear of misunderstanding. The definitions of Outdoor/Indoor should not be understood according to a relationship of alternation, but rather of contiguity; therefore, the OE approach must be understood as an educational path capable of guaranteeing interactive and integrated development between man and nature.

Providing knowledge and skills necessary to promote sustainable development, is among the goals of the 2030 Agenda (4.7). If the promotion of "sustainability literacy" goes through transdisciplinary and participatory approaches (UNESCO), the same is true in education measures related to textiles and apparel, where it is also necessary to provide critical tools to recognize the use of sustainability as a marketing tool (Rodriquez et al. 2020).
Despite this, Italian teachers are still little inclined to integrate sustainability topics into their teaching hours (Smaniotto et al., 2022) and also in informal science communication venues, such as science festivals, the topic is mainly dealt with in a techno-centric perspective.

CNR-IRPPS researchers developed and tested a workshop for the engagement of a high school audience on this topic, allowing participants to deal with issues related to 4 sub-systems (socio-ecological, technological, political, economic), discussing their choices at the level of individuals and the implications of the choices made in each sub-system at the macro level.

Here we discuss how this tool can provide a useful basis for approaching the topic of fashion sustainability in a systemic way for a school-age audience.

The case of textiles, and especially of fast fashion, is particularly interesting when it comes to education and social justice, for several reasons: the environmental impact, the intersection of social justice issues related to labour rights and gender issues, and also because, as in many other areas of sustainability, political, economic and technological choices are intertwined with the level of individual consumer choice. Choices that do not necessarily consistently reflect the principles and values of the subjects.

Young people and teenagers especially had paid the heaviest fees to the pandemic restriction policies in every European country even if there are many other different characteristics as social class, gender, insisting on this topic (Meherali at. al., 2021, Panda et. al, 2021, Oosterhof et. al, 2020).

Many scholars have enlightened that covid-19 virus did not have had the same consequences over every kind of citizens and oh this regards they preferred to use the concept of syndemic in order of clarify how health care aspects need to combine with social aspects to provide a proper image of the different effects of the virus dissemination based on social, age, gender, geographic living location of European citizens (Horton, 2020).

This dimensions caused a different capacity to cope or suffer the consequences of this phenomenon. In the post syndemic period many datas underlines the difficults of teenagers on getting back to the in-presence social life (i.e. at school, with the peers, about the dialogue with parents) (Le Breton, 2016). The most diffuse kind of behavior in response to those difficult, are oriented to a depressive mode (hikikomori, early school leaving, psychiatric episodes) or to a reacting anti-social mode ("baby ganging", violence between peers, conflicts against adults). In response to these. In the Italian case, to cope these attitudes by adolescents in the media debate and from Institutional policies it can be notice a binarian approach. From one hand, the leading idea rising up especially from the media, is that adolescence is an illness which needs a therapeutic approach. From another hand, the institutional decision seams address by an authoritarian approach de-juvenilization of adolescents (Laffi, 2000). The hypothesis is that adult society way of thinking is starting to watch to adolescents as a new ethnic minor group in competition with adults. Leaded by dis-valors like competition, education aimed to the development of skills useful only for the labor market, misunderstanding concept of merit, social and cultural devices are working to build up an image of teenagers as weak, dangerous and not homologated. In this scenario, the role of education in put under discussion as well. If the long process lasting almost one century of democratizing education and supporting it with a scientific framework represented by the sciences of education, have forged a consolidated idea of separation between education and politics power on change, today this epistemological consciousness is under attack. It seems to rising up from the past the "black pedagogy" (Miller, 1990) which allow repression and punishments as ways to put under control deviant adolescence. Moreover, education seems to get back to the role of institution aimed to transfer knowledge and confirm social status quo and not anymore as a pedagogical agency to reduce social and cultural disadvantage and as a democratic workshop. In order to avoid the affirming of this dystopia, it is important reinforce the epistemological basis of education as well as scientific vision of education (Tolomelli,2029).