The Role of Minimal Waste Education on The Understanding and Habits of Students in Sidenreng Rappang

Abstract

The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that climate change is caused by increasing global warming as a result of human activities in various sectors of life, including the problem of waste. Lifestyle, lack of public awareness in controlling the waste is one of the important keys in increasing global warming. The study aims to find out the extent of adolescents’ understanding related to waste, waste management, and low-waste lifestyle. It was also to know the relationship between waste education and students’ awareness in handling waste in the surrounding environment. The data was obtained through online instruments distributed to students, the observation and other supporting media. The research employed a quantitative approach with quantitative descriptive analysis techniques using percentages. The results of the data analysis showed that the level of students’ knowledge related to waste, waste control and low-waste lifestyle was in the good category, which reached an average of 83% correct answers. However, it was not in line with the students’ habits in minimizing food waste and plastic waste where 29.4% chose to throw away and 20.6% chose to burn. This was in line with the fact that there were still 14.6% of students who had not received education related to waste. It can be the basis for improving waste processing education in the educational environment as an effort to overcome climate change.