Abstract. The article highlights the impact of teaching special educational disciplines on the formation of environmental awareness among students of Ukrainian universities and the importance of this process in the implementation of the goals and objectives of sustainable development of Ukraine. The purpose of the article is to determine the role of the ecological component of sustainable development in the teaching of educational disciplines in institutions of higher education of Ukraine. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time, based on the analysis of the content of the syllabi of individual academic disciplines taught in Ukrainian universities, the impact of such teaching on the formation of environmental awareness of students of humanitarian and technical specialties and their readiness to implement the tasks of sustainable development of Ukraine has been determined. The research confirmed the connection between teaching environmental disciplines for students and the formation of a sustainable idea about the global problems of humanity. At the same time, most of them have lack of comprehensive idea of the prospects of sustainable development, the content of its components and the specifics of the formation of connections between them. It was determined that the ecological component of the concept of sustainable development is embodied in the teaching of a number of academic disciplines in universities of Ukraine. The majority of students express concern about the facts of environmental pollution and realize their connection with global problems of humanity, worrying about their own safety. In general, the instructors managed to form students’ ideas about the global problems of humanity and the prospects for overcoming them, and the level of environmental awareness of the respondents turned out to be relatively high. In this regard, perhaps it would be worthwhile to introduce the teaching discipline “Fundamentals of sustainable development” for students of all majors, replacing it with environmental disciplines.