Lukiolaisten tiedot ja asenteet mikromuoveista

Plastics play a significant role in industry.Microplastics are small plastic pieces that are less than 5 mm long.Microplastics are commonly used in industry, for example in cosmetic industry.Microplastics are also created during the degradation and dissolution of larger plastic products.There have been a lot of news concerning microplastics during the last year.This study examines attitudes and knowledge of high school students concerning microplastics in the Eastern Finland.The data was collected from Joensuu and Kuopio region using an electric questionnaire at the end of 2018.The following variables were measured in this study: age, gender, location of high school, class, interest in environmental issues and participation in the Ecology and the Environment course (BI2).Students were asked to describe both the production of plastics and the advantages and disadvantages of plastics.There were also questions about of high school students attitudes and knowledge concerning microplastics.Students had to tell how much information about microplastics they had received from different sources.In addition, there were questions concerning how individuals and society can reduce microplastics.Content analysis was used to analyse open questions.Spearman's rank-order correlation and Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests were used to analyse how different variables affected the students' knowledge on microplastics.The connection between variables and attitudes was analysed with Fisher's exact test.According to this study, high school students were generally aware of both the production of plastics and the advantages and disadvantages of plastics.Social media, newspapers and high schools provided the most information regarding microplastics.This indicates that high schools teach current issues and students follow news and social media.Students that had undergone the BI2-course and were interested in environmental issues had greater knowledge of microplastics than students that had not undergone the BI2-course and were not as interested in environmental issues.These students that had undergone BI2-course and were interested in environmental issues were also more concerned about microplastics than students that had not undergone the BI2-course and were not as interested in environmental issues.According to the results of this study, majority of students thought that in addition to society, they themselves were able to influence the amount of microplastics.