<b>Analysis of social and environmental practices related to conscious consumption of students from public education of Sertão Pernambucano, Brazil

Abstract

ABSTRACT.This research aimed to analyze socio-environmental practices related to the conscious consumption of students of Sertão Pernambucano. A total of 174 high school students from two public schools were interviewed through a 29-item Likert-type measurement scale with five response levels. Among the students, 62.4% were female and 37.6% were male, aged between 15 and 20 years. It was found that 5.8% of the students were careful to take into account if the product residues were recyclable, 40.0% showed indifference or little commitment to use as few shopping bags as possible and the minority (8.3%) of the students used to separate the waste by categories. 47.9% of the students affirmed to reuse draft paper and 55.9% save gift paper for future packaging. Few have the habit of watching (24.8%), talking to friends (12.9%) or alerting people (23.2%) about environmental problems or news. Therefore, Environmental Education, particularly, habits related to conscious consumption, needs to be inserted in the school context so that socio-educational actions become a daily practice, improving the expectations of future generations.Keywords: human activity, education, sustainability.Análise de práticas socioambientais relacionadas ao consumo consciente de estudantes do ensino público do Sertão Pernambucano, Brasil RESUMO. Essa pesquisa objetivou analisar as práticas socioambientais relacionadas ao consumo consciente de estudantes do Sertão Pernambucano. Foram entrevistados 174 estudantes concluintes do ensino médio, de duas escolas públicas, por meio de uma escala de medida constituída por 29 itens no modelo da escala de Likert com cinco níveis de respostas. Dentre os estudantes, 62,4% eram do gênero feminino e 37,6% do masculino, com idade entre 15 e 20 anos. Verificou-se que 5,8% dos estudantes levam em conta se os resíduos dos produtos são recicláveis, 40,0% demonstraram indiferença ou pouco compromisso em utilizar o mínimo possível de sacolas nas suas compras e a minoria (8,3%) dos estudantes separava o lixo por categorias. Os estudantes (47,9%) alegaram reutilizar papéis para rascunho e 55,9% papel de presente em embalagens futuras. Poucos têm o hábito de assistir (24,8%), conversar com os amigos (12,9%) ou alertar pessoas (23,2%) sobre problemas ou notícias ambientais. Com isso, na Educação Ambiental, particularmente, os hábitos relacionados ao consumo consciente precisam ser inseridos no contexto escolar para que ações socioeducativas se tornem uma prática cotidiana que melhore as expectativas das gerações futuras.Palavras-chave: atividade humana, educação, sustentabilidade.

Conscious Consumerism Education in Social Studies Courses: Reflections of an Action Research

“…Similarly, Purutcuoglu (2003) found that students perceive conscious consumers as someone who spends money in a planned manner and claims their consumer rights. These results, as in other studies in the literature (Makela & Peters, 2004;McGregor, 2005McGregor, , 2010McGregor, , 2011Süle, 2012;Mazlan, Redzuan, & Bakar, 2014;Cavalcante, Silva & Tavares, 2017), reveal the importance of responsible, sustainable and thoughtful consumption for conscious consumers.…”

“…Various studies have been conducted on conscious consumerism education, which is one of the essential topics of the social studies course. These studies mostly examined topics such as consumer behaviors (Altiok, 2010;Uysal, 2017;Araboga, 2018), consumer awareness levels (Ersoy & Nazik, 2006;Akyuz, 2009;Saglam, 2010;Malbelegi & Saglam, 2013;Uyanik, 2015;Alimcan, 2018;Toy, 2019) and conscious consumerism education (Makela & Peters, 2004;McGregor, 2005McGregor, , 2010McGregor, , 2011Pinarci, 2007;Malbelegi, 2011;Süle, 2012;Unay, 2012;Ozkaya, 2013;Danilane & Marzano, 2014;Ersoy & Papatga, 2015;Cavalcante, Silva, & Tavares, 2017).…”