Environmental Literacy for Waste Management in an Academic Community: A Case Study

Excessive waste production has been one of the main causes for the environmental imbalances caused by humanity on the Planet. Minimize this problem demands for the promotion of the environmental literacy on waste management and, to do that, an investment in more and better environmental education. However, first, we need to know the level of environmental literacy each community has developed so far and what is missing to reach an adequate performance. As so, environmental education could be conveniently oriented with a most effective approach and with an adequate match between the defined goals and those really needed. Present study evaluates environmental literacy for waste management in the academic community of the University of Madeira (Portugal), characterizing knowledge, attitude and behaviour among students, teachers, and other staff. Results show a good performance for knowledge, even better for attitude, but only sufficient for behaviours. Additionally, it identifies those knowledges and behaviours that need to be prioritized in future environmental education approaches, besides clarifying that the effectiveness on implementing waste management best practices is most dependent on social, physical, and organizational transformations than on knowledge and attitude.