Introduction: Solid waste management became an important environmental issue in the last century. This study was conducted to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of people regarding urban waste management in Shahrekord in 2013. Solid waste materials in Shahrekord often include household, commercial, industrial, construction and agricultural waste. These wastes are buried unseparated and a percentage of the waste remains unmanaged. Since there is no recycling factory in Chaharmahal & Bakhtiari Province, many wastes, which have high economic value, are destroyed with indifference. Considering the influential role of urban and provincial managers and planners, with a little reflection and acceptance of the role of community members in the management cycle, many problems related to the next stages of the waste disposal system can be reduced to the minimum possible.
Materials and Methods: In order to execute this study, a combined method (field, library and documentary, analytical and descriptive methods) was used. The city was divided into three districts and randomly, 50 questionnaires (n=150) were distributed. The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by an expert in the field of waste materials from the medical sciences universities in the country and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha test. Finally, the data obtained from these questionnaires were analyzed using Excel and SPSS version 19 software, aided by descriptive statistics, correlation tests and variance analysis. In order to investigate the effect of gender on the participation rate, independent T-test was used, and the effect of education and age structure on the participation rate was evaluated by ANOVA test.
Results: Given a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.87, the questions asked in the questionnaires had good validity. The largest number of respondents to the questionnaires were in the age range of 25-40 years old (53.3 percent), and in terms of education, they had associate and bachelors degrees (55.3 percent). Also, 50.7% of the respondents were women and 49.3% were men. The results showed a significant relationship between the level of education of people and their knowledge about solid waste management (chi-square, 0.05). There was no relationship between the awareness of people and their age and gender (chi-square, 0.05). The results of the frequency distribution of people’s responses regarding solid waste showed that approximately 97% of people are fully aware of the difference between dry and wet waste. The mean score of awareness of people in this study was 31.88 ± 0.98 (mean ± SD) of 68 score.
Discussion: According to these results, awareness of people in Shahrekord was estimated as medium. These results indicated that in a society with a high level of culture, it is easier to manage solid waste. Therefore, there is a need for planning to change the behavior and attitudes of families and implement programs to increase people’s knowledge based on the social and cultural context of the study area. Therefore, to improve solid waste management, it should be use appropriate educational media to promote public culture in relation to solid waste management.