Analysis of Reduce Waste Activity Across Generations in Medan City

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The condition of solid waste in Medan City is very worrying. 37.3% of waste in Indonesia comes from household activities. The residents of Medan city produce 5,616 m³/day or 2,000 tons/day of waste, the increasing of waste reaches 2%-4% annually and was not transferred to landfill. This condition created problems for the environment both in terms of esthetics, as well as public health problems. The government has issued regulations to limit household waste and reduce and recycle household waste. Community participation is very much needed in the waste problem.

AIM: The research aim was to analyze reduced activity across the generations.

METHODS: This research was an descriptive survey and used cross-sectional design to measure reuse actions. The data were collected from three generations X, Y, and Z, it was 600 respondents as sample. This study was located in Medan City with 15 sub-districts. The techniques of data collection were using cluster sampling. The techniques of data collection was using cluster sampling. The questiontionare used in this study consist of waste management knowledge and reduce action questions. The type of data is numeric and data analyzed by ANOVA test.

RESULTS: The study shown characteristics of the sample by sex; 30.5% male, 69.5% female. The level of education in this study was 18.2% primary education, 71.5% secondary education, and 10.3% higher education. Meanwhile the characteristics by age was 26.8% Gen X, 32.4% Gen Y and 40.8% Gen Z. Amount 42.8% of the sample had taken the reduced action. Generation Z has the most dominant percentage (41%), followed by Generation Y (32.3%) and Generation X (26.8%). The result of analyze reduce action in across generations using ANOVA Test shown p = 0.001.

CONCLUSIONS: The reduced action was dominated by Generation Z (42.8%). The most frequent reduce action was the used of towels and old bed linen which are cut into small pieces to be used as rags and the lest was preferred to buy second-hand clothes instead of buying new clothes. There were differences in reduced actions between generations. Each generation is expected to have awareness and cooperation in reducing actions, especially Generation Z, which is an agent of change in reducing the volume of waste. The understanding of each generation toward waste management needs to be improved through health promotion.