Pupils' Awareness and Practices Towards Waste Management: Basis for School's Solid Waste Management Program

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Republic Act 9003 or also known as "Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000" encourages DepEd to incorporate ecological waste management in the school system to promote environmental awareness and practices to pupils. This means that schools should have to hold a program for waste management, due to this, the researchers have conducted this study to know how aware the pupils are and what are their practices toward solid waste management to become a basis in designing a program for solid waste management in the school.

METHODS

The researchers made use of a descriptive research. Questionnaire, the principal instrument, was designed to determine the awareness and practices of pupils in regarding solid waste management. Using stratified random sampling the researchers used 300 pupils to participate in the study. Simple descriptive statistics like frequency, distribution and percentage was used in treating the data.

RESULTS

The research shows that 82.27% of the respondents in San Roque Elementary School is aware of solid waste management. This means that most of the pupils know the effects of improper waste disposal to the environment and most of them know how to segregate bio and non-biodegradable waste because of integrating environmental topics in their subjects. On the other hand, 70.93% of the pupils is practicing the proper waste disposal. This means that most of the pupils recycle, segregate, and throw their garbage on proper trash bins.

DISCUSSIONS

Even though most of the pupils are aware and practicing proper waste management there are still 17.73% who are not aware and there are 29.07% who are not practicing solid waste management. Due to the following results, this research recommends the school to hold seminars that discuss the effects of improper waste disposal and proper segregation of bio and non-biodegradable waste. To encourage pupils to practice proper waste management the school could implement an income generating project where in pupils will identify and collect their waste material that could be sold in junk shops and the pupils who are actively participating in the project will get a reward. Another project that can encourage them to practice proper waste management is to have a project on recycling which could be integrated in different subject area.