Measuring Public Awareness and Actions for 3Rs

Public awareness of appropriate solid waste management practices (3Rs; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) is the starting point for and fundamental ingredient of a sound material-cycle and resource-efficient society. Public awareness forms the basis of public capacity, which enables the public to undertake actual actions of each element of the 3Rs. Such actions consequently become the inputs for the advancement or “performance” of 3Rs for a sound material-cycle society.
Central and local governments, environmental NGOs, entrepreneurs, mass-media, and others all influence public awareness through their policies, practices and operations, which as a whole leads to “capacity development”, as portrayed in figure 1. How public awareness and the related actions can be increased forms the focus of this factsheet.