Title of Project

Factors affecting whether people do garbage sorting or not

Research question

Do motivators for garbage sorting outweigh the barriers for UBC students?

Student researcher names

Katrina Zhou and Levi Shi

Project proposal summary

Our project is about garbage sorting. According to our research, many scholars have studied what will motivate people to do garbage sorting, we call this “motivators”, others have studied what will prevent people doing garbage sorting, we call this "barriers". We want to explore whether these motivators are greater than barriers for UBC students. On the one hand, if the result is positive, we can predict most of the students in UBC will have an incentive to garbage classification, so that our campus will be better and better. On the other hand, if the result is negative, some necessary measures such as lectures, Internet can encourage people to correct garbage classification therefore optimize our campus.

Project Objectives and Contribution to Scholarship

In previous studies, some scholars believe that many factors may lead people to have a positive attitude towards garbage sorting, for example, they know that improper disposal will lead to environmental pollution (WHO, 2015). Some scholars believe that there are also many factors that can cause people to have negative attitudes such as their lack of education(Shabini, 2015) or the belief that it is unnecessary (W. Liu et al., 2020). We will explore whether the positive factors outweigh the negative factors to predict whether UBC students will correctly classify garbage. If the positive factors outweigh the negative ones, students will be more likely to be motivated to carry out the correct garbage classification, so if students keep doing garbage sorting and some proper encouragement can make our campus even better. If the negative factors outweigh the positive ones, we should try more methods, such as the implementation of policies and some lectures to help students change their minds to protect the environment of the school and even the environment of the whole Canada and the whole earth.

Connection of Research Proposal to Sustainability

There are more than seven billion of us, and we generate rubbish daily. Half of this waste is not collected, handled, or disposed of safely, resulting in a global waste issue. As these toxic compounds permeate into our oceans, the spread of plastic is catastrophic for the Earth and its inhabitants. Large marine creatures are washing ashore with trash in their stomachs. Massive dumps leach chemicals that contaminate groundwater, streams, and rivers. Healthy life on land (SDG 15) is only possible if waste is effectively managed. Additionally, waste pollutes the air we breathe. Without waste management services, individuals may only dispose of their trash in the open air or by burning it, which can have terrible health repercussions (SDG 3). In addition, poorly managed garbage contributes methane and carbon dioxide to climate change: landfills may account for one-tenth of human-produced greenhouse gases within a decade (SDG 13).

References

Liu, W. M., Huang, H. B., Jiang, M. H., Li, M. J. (2020). Research on the application of domestic waste classification design based on intelligent means to meet users' psychology. 2020 International Conference on Intelligent Design (ICID). https://doi.org/10.1109/icid52250.2020.00010

Shabani, R. A. (2015). Factors affecting community participation in solid waste management in Lind municipal council Tanzania. University of Tanzania.

World Health Organization. (2015). Waste management. In REDUCING GLOBAL HEALTH RISKS: Through mitigation of short-lived climate pollutants (pp. 90– 94). World Health Organization. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep33063.14