A Study of the Residents’ Attitude toward Complete-Sorting and Zero-Waste Policy in Kaohsiung City

• Main Authors: Shu-Chen Yeh, 葉素眞
• Other Authors: 盧昭彰
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/04854106509995405403

碩士 === 台南女子技術學院 === 生活應用科學研究所 === 94 === Abstract Waste treatment has been a major issue in highly populated Taiwan for the past thirty years. The Environmental Protection Administration initiated a four-in-one recycling program in 1997 and a food leftover recycling system in 2001. The goal of the following zero-waste policy is to cut the garbage down to 75% by 2007 taking 2001 as the baseline year. Among all the constituents of household waste in Taiwan, leftover is the most significant one which shares the weight of 25% in average. It is thus extremely important to understand the residents’ attitude toward zero-waste policy, including leftover recycling, as to cope with the final goal. Questionnaires were distributed to seven hundred households at all six districts in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan of a population over 1.5 million. Three dependent variables of the residents’ cognition, attitude, and action toward the zero-waste policy are analyzed according to their relationships to the residents’ background variables. Description statistics, t-test and ANOVA are employed to analyze the collected data. Six hundred and seventy-six effective samples were retrieved with a percentage of 96.6%. The reliability of sample with Cronbach α is 0.91 for the attitude section. More than 72% of the residents submit their recyclable waste directly to the government-owned garbage trucks, which means the policy has gained progress through an eight-year promotion. More than 50% of the residents produce leftover less than 10% in weight of all waste. Only 47% of the residents are willing to make organic composite from their own leftover due to the lack of available space in the crowd city. However, three quarters of the residents show high interest in using organic composite and are willing to pay for it, which means an effective recycling system for leftover run by the government is necessary especially in Kaohsiung City. While there exists no significant difference between male and female residents in terms of cognition toward the zero-waste policy, there are significant difference in both attitude and action, which implies that female residents do most of the housework traditionally. Moreover, all three sections reveal significant difference at five levels of age of the residents. In the future, education and promotion of the zero-waste policy should be emphasized on gender and age differentiation. It is also suggested that more space inside the public area should be provided by the city government along with the existing recycling system to make the leftover recycling more efficient.