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Role of knowledge and attitude of public and private school students for plastic pollution awareness, usage, and management in Lahore, Pakistan

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Abstract

To identify the knowledge and attitude of public and private school students for plastic pollution awareness, usage, and management, a questionnaire-based study was conducted among 300 students among fourteen different schools in Lahore, Pakistan. In general, 47.3% of the selected population knows plastic waste. However, the mean knowledge score in public and private schools was 46.5% and 60%, respectively. The parent’s education showed a positive response to the student’s awareness about plastic pollution (p < 0.05), while the age of the student showed no significant impact on their attitude. The study also indicated that 50.7% of students in private and 46.7% of students in public schools considered reusing and recycling as the most preferred method for reducing plastic waste. Moreover, 24% of students in private and 20% of students in public sector were also willing to support environmental campaigns by paying money. All these statistics conclude that private school students showed a more positive attitude than public school students. Common waste management practice adopted in both type of schools was the transportation of waste to the dumping site followed by open dumping of the waste in the vicinity which contradicts the statistics based on the knowledge of students.

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Datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the administrative staff of selected schools in Lahore, Pakistan for facilitating the survey. The authors would like to appreciate the institution, i.e., College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan for providing the resources.

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The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. Sameera Mukhtar and Ayman Asad have share equal contribution.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan

    Sameera Mukhtar, Ayman Asad, Mehvish Mumtaz, Abdul Qadir & Sajid Rashid Ahmad

  2. Pakistan Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Lahore, Pakistan

    Asad Ullah Saeed

  3. Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Asad Ullah Saeed

  4. Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Queens Hospital Centre, New York, USA

    Hafiz Fahad Ullah Saeed

Authors
  1. Sameera Mukhtar
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  2. Ayman Asad
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  3. Mehvish Mumtaz
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  4. Asad Ullah Saeed
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  5. Abdul Qadir
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  6. Sajid Rashid Ahmad
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  7. Hafiz Fahad Ullah Saeed
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Contributions

SM (conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis and investigation, editing, writing—original draft preparation), AA (conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis and investigation, editing, writing—original draft preparation), MM (visualization, conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis and investigation, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition, resources, supervision), AUS (conceptualization, visualization, reviewing, editing), AQ (conceptualization, visualization, reviewing, resources), SRA (conceptualization, visualization, reviewing), HFUS (conceptualization, visualization and reviewing, editing).

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mehvish Mumtaz.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Furthermore, the authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Mukhtar, S., Asad, A., Mumtaz, M. et al. Role of knowledge and attitude of public and private school students for plastic pollution awareness, usage, and management in Lahore, Pakistan. J Mater Cycles Waste Manag 26, 175–183 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-023-01816-3

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