The relationship between a campus composting program and environmental attitudes, environmental locus of control, compost knowledge, and compost attitudes of college students

Abstract

Food waste is one of the most abundant materials contributing to land fills in the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates 96% of uneaten food ends up in land fills. Food and other organic wastes generate potent greenhouse gases in the atmosphere precipitating global climate change. College campus cafeterias generate a large amount of food waste and some universities are making efforts to capture and compost food waste. The purpose of this study was to measure the relationship between participation in a university composting program and students’ environmental attitudes, environmental locus of control (refers to the belief that an individual’s actions play a direct role in the result of any affair), compost knowledge, and compost attitudes. Undergraduate and graduate students were given a survey, which included an environmental attitude scale, an environmental locus of control inventory and sections where students reported their composting habits, knowledge of the composting process, and how composting made them feel. Atotal of 660 surveys were collected from two universities, one that acted as the treatment and the other as the control group. The results indicated a statistically significant difference between the school with a composting program and the school without a composting program on the variables of environmental attitudes, environmental locus of control, and composting knowledge. Furthermore, composting attitudes were positively related to environmental attitudes, environmental locus of control, and compost knowledge at the university with a composting program. Demographic comparisons found differences within the treatment group on the composting attitude and knowledge and environmental attitude inventories but not locus of control.