What drive students to behave more environmentally friendly towards waste?

Students’ behaviortowards waste takes a crucial role to successful sustainable waste managementat school level. As many scholars mentioned, a proper waste management shouldnot only environmentally effective and economically efficient, but alsosocially acceptable. Therefore, it is important to know how to drive studentsto behave more environmental friendly. Using eco-friendly behavior survey forstudents as part of community engagement program titled “Creating Healthy, Fitand Productive Generation through Comprehensive Mental Revolution Model”, thispaper aims to identify factors that determine students’ eco-friendly behavior.This survey was administered to 797 students from three high schools in thecity of Bekasi, SMA N 1 Bekasi, SMA N 2 Bekasi and SMK Korpri. We divided threebroad characteristics in determining student’s eco-friendly behavior, namelyindividual characteristics, household characteristics and communitycharacteristics, as mentioned in various researches. The result shows that outof three broad characteristics, individual characteristics play significantrole in determining the level of student’s eco-friendly behavior. In terms ofindividual characteristics, knowledge about waste and school course playspositive and significant role in determining the level. For the study course,we conclude that students in the science course have a relatively higher eco-friendlybehavior level compared to social course or others. Female students are alsomore likely to have higher level of eco-friendly behavior rather than malestudents. Finally, daily expenditure significantly determines the level. On theother hand, we found that environmental concern and class rank do not havesignificant effect to student’s behavior. In addition, none of the householdand community characteristics variables were significant in determining thebehavior. This result emphasizes the importance of individual characteristicsimprovement, especially waste knowledge and environmental education, to drivestudents in dealing waste appropriately