For the development of society, the training of upright professionals is required, especially in environmental matters. Therefore, it is necessary to apply training processes that involve the construction of competencies, to face the solution of the problems that currently arise. For this, academic spaces are required with methodologies that apply and execute human and disciplinary competencies; one of these methodologies is the POPBL (Project-Oriented Problem-Based Learning). This research will establish environmental education as a strategy to solve the generation of solid waste, applying the POPBL method and the development of human and professional skills and competencies. The projects were developed and applied by students from the Faculty of Environmental Engineering of the Santo Tomas University, in the first, sixth, and seventh semesters in the 2019-II period, guided by the teacher and where the main topic was environmental education and solid waste management. The researcher applied qualitative and quantitative data collection instruments to determine the state of the competencies and strengthened in the academic period through the POPBL. It was evident that the students at the beginning of this research were not clear about how these competencies were developed and their answers were according to their expectations of application and generation. As the application of research projects and teacher interventions explained the development of competencies, the students were able to relate their training process with the development of competencies and solve current environmental problems.