Evaluation of Attitudes & Knowledge Regarding Municipal Waste among Students. Case study: Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies

As Maloney and Ward (1973) noted thirty eight years ago, determining what the population knows regarding ecology, the environment and pollution; how they feel about it; what commitments they are willing to make and what commitments they do make are necessary steps that must be made before adopting any strategy that modifies behaviour and habits. Taking into account that Romania is facing a great challenge to bring its waste management system in line with EU Directives and the key role of education in this process, the paper aims to explore through a questionnaire based survey: (1) the level of knowledge and awareness regarding municipal waste among students, their attitudes and willingness to act in waste related activities, (2) if there are significant differences regarding students awareness, knowledge and concern according to their gender, age, affiliation (faculty) or job status. The paper is structured in four parts, namely: introduction, research methodology, results analysis and conclusions. The findings of this research study showed that the majority of students are generally aware of waste problems. It is important to note, however, that many respondents called for more information, frequent updates and reminders about waste management practices. Pro-environmental and recycling attitudes were shown to be generally positive among students from BAES. Used in the right way such findings might be essential in achieving the overall goal of improving waste management systems, whether it is a recycling scheme, composting scheme or refers to the improvement of environmental awareness process.