Topic: The Awareness of IIUM Students of the Go Green campaign. 1.0 Introduction 1.

1 Background of the study: Awareness according to New Oxford Dictionary (2007) means consciousness or interest. Going green is a popular term used to describe the process of changing ones lifestyle for the safety and benefit of the environment. People who go green make decisions about their daily lives while considering what impact the outcome of those decisions may have on global warming, pollution, loss of animal habitats, and other environmental concerns (Shauna Osborn, 2011). Hence the term Go Green campaign refers to campaign of changing ones lifestyle for the good of the environment. The title talks about the level of understanding and consciousness of the students lifestyle for the safety and benefit of the environment. People nowadays are more concerned about the environment since they know the effect of pollution to the environment and to humans health. The normal everyday electrical appliances used up large amounts of power and produced large amount of carbon dioxides annually and becoming one of the sources of global warming. Going green campaign is an effort made to encourage the public of these facts and inspire people to actually react accordingly. It is still a new trend in Malaysia housing development to apply Green Home concept here in this country whereby a house is created to use
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less energy, water and natural resources, to provide good air quality and comfort, to generate less wastage and can be considered as sustainable development that improve the homeowners lifestyle.

Basically, campaigns such as Lets Recycle, Earth Hour, Love Your Nature, and No Plastic Day are all part of Go Green campaign. To conclude, several actions have already been taken by non-governmental organization as well as the governmental organization. But, the unawareness of the society and lack of participation in this effort as if they do not know the real facts and take precautionary acts against their routine of harming the environment.

1.2 Problem statement: Looking at the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) green campaign, the ban on polystyrene is actually to reduce the use of this non-biodegradable polystyrene foam commonly used as cups and food containers, and thus its impact on the environment. As far as to consumers health is concerned, polystyrene used as food serving utensils must comply with food legislation. The lifestyles of students vary in accordance to their own preferences. Generally, IIUM students use polystyrene container when buying lunch, use plastic bags when shopping,
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do not separate their rubbish in orderly manner that ease up recycling effort, over usage of electrical appliances and others. Thus, the purpose of this research is to know the level of awareness among students on the importance of going green. 1.3 Objectives: The objectives are listed to ensure the flow of the research is going in the right direction. 1. To study the level of awareness of the students on the Go Green campaign. 2. To study the level of participation of the students on the Go Green campaign. 3. To recommend ways of increasing the participation of students on the campaign. 1.4 Research Questions: 1. How much is the percentage of the students that are aware of Go Green issue? 2. How much is the level of participation of the students in the Go Green campaign?
3. What can be done to increase the participation of students on the

campaign? 2.0 Literature Review

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Nowadays, the worlds population is getting more and more concerned about activities which can lead to global warming and cause pollution to the environment. Earth is excessively being exposed to all kind of pollutant resources and every individual have to play their roles in protecting the Earth. Green technologies can be used to protect the earth and environment. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced the environmental problems of water shortages and global warming are two major issues that the world faced. UNEP stated that all these environmental issues will endanger the humans besides endanger the earth (Harris, 2007). Home owners used up large amount of power and become a major source of the global warming since it produced between 10 and 30 tons of carbon dioxides annually. Some 1.8 billion tons or more carbon dioxides could be saved by applying green development (Harris, 2007). Despite all of that, the awareness and participation among public are not as expected. In a research conducted in U.S , only four out of ten American consider environmental impact to be important to them when planning activities , only 8% of green travelers believe it is easy to find green travel options, 56% are skeptical of what companies tell them about their green practices (Carrol Rheem, 2009).

Although Green Homes have been around for centuries but they are not widely practiced in Malaysia. Architects started to design a home which
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uses less electricity. They introduced the use of solar energy in 1970s when the first major global energy shortage took place ( Harris, 2007). This concept has just set its foot in Malaysia in year 2007 through the development of the luxury Green Homes at Taman Tun Dr Ismail (TTDI), Ampang, Selangor (Andrew, 2007). This means that the Malaysians should put more effort especially the university educated level which are students of protecting the environment starting from their own house, hostels or rooms. Thus this research focuses on students acceptability , participations and awareness of this particular campaign in their lives. In conclusion, the students awareness of the Go Green campaign is crucial as a preventive measure of worlds calamity. The knowledge of the causes and effects of not living green will keep reminding the society of the perils and threats that may befall us. 3.0 Research methodology 3.1 Introduction: This particular part of the study discusses the ways in which the study is conducted. The key purpose of the study is to identify the level of awareness of IIUM students on the Go Green Campaign. In order to evaluate the understanding of IIUM students about this important issue, the Kuantan campus of IIUM is chosen with 30 undergraduates from the Kuliyyah of Science were chosen. Data for the study were accumulated through questionnaire.
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3.2 Research instruments: This study only involves the use of quantitative research methodology. The major instrument use to complete the research is the questionnaire. A set of questionnaire containing 14 questions that is divided into 3 parts is developed. They are distinctions between each parts as it pertains to the level of understanding of IIUM students concerning the issue, questions that shows the level of participation and acceptability of IIUM students on campaign. The questionnaire includes several close end questions and some open end question end. The close end questions are differentiated as yes-no and listing. 3.3 Respondents of the study: The respondents of the study are the second year students of biotechnology program of the Kuliyyah of Science, IIUM. In November 25th, a total of 30 students from various courses from the Kuliyyah of Science will be given list of questionnaire. From the 30 students, 17 of them are males and the rest are females. 3.4 Research procedure

In the study, the questionnaires were distributed to various locations in the Kuliyyah of Science including the hostels, the reading room and classes of the kuliyyah. The respondents were approached with the explanation of the study and asked whether they agree to do the questionnaires. The respondents are given no time limit to answer the questionnaires so they can answer without any pressure and all answers are collected at the same day. The process only took a day and all data are tabulated for data analysis.

3.5 Data analysis: To analyze the data, several variables have to be taken into consideration namely, the level of awareness of IIUM students on the existence of the Go Green campaign, the students level of participation of the campaign and the ways to increase and facilitate their participation the IIUM community on the campaign. The results are presented through the charts and other descriptive statistics. The data gain from the open end questions are analyzed in such a way that the similarities are understood and the conclusion can be made from such survey. The data also are processed in focus of answering all the research questions of this research.

4.0 Finding and discussions: 4.1 Survey respondents

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A total of thirty (30) students from the Kuliyyah of science IIUM Kuantan, have completed the questionnaire. All of them are second year students of biotechnology program (BSBT).Based on figure 1, Male students made up 57 % (n = 17) and female students made up 43 % (n= 13) as respondents for the survey 4.2 The level of awareness of IIUM students on the existence of the Go Green campaign.

Figure 2 shows that all most all thirty respondents have heard about the Go Green campaign with the percentage of 93% (n=27) answered yes and only 7% (n=3) answered no. From the pie chart in Figure 2 alone, we can consider that in term of information, the students are mostly exposed to the issue and received the information on the Go Green campaign.

Figure 3 shows the result of the students answering a question regarding the purpose of the campaigns. From the pie chart, 33% voted for pollution, 35% for global warming, there are also votes for political/organized conspiracy 10% and 22% for animal extinction. Through this part of findings, we can firstly observe that the fact that all 30 respondents are able to answer this question only means that they all
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have each personal opinion and are well aware of the Go Green issue. None of the respondents that are 0% of them answered they do not know. The differences in their answers lead to the conclusion that the students all had already aware of this particular issue and have also done their own research or received information about it. In addition to that, it also shows that all respondents are concerned with the Go Green issues.

4.3 The level of participation of the students in the Go Green campaign.

To study the level of participation, a few questions are included in the questionnaire specifically to study their lifestyle. Figure 4 shows the weekly usage of the polystyrene containers among students. The highest percentage which is 50% refers to those who use those 8 or more times in a week which shows that half of the majority of the respondents despite knowing about the Go Green are unfortunately not showing a positive result in terms of participation. This is most probably due to financial factors and the norms of the students eating habit for generations.

4.4 Acceptability of the students towards the Go Green campaign

As show in figure 6, the percentage of respondents that agree that the Go Green campaign is continued in order to educate and promote green living or eco-friendly lifestyle is on the majority with the total of 83.33% (n=25) and the rest 5 % do not agree and do not really care. Hence, majority voted for the continuity of the campaign and this automatically shows that their acceptability and support towards the campaign are high.

Figure 7 shows a different aspect of the findings, the respondents are asked about their opinion about implementing a rule whereby penalty is given to those who leave their hostel room without switching off the electricity. The results from the bar chart in figure 7 shows more than half of the respondents agree which means, they are ready to act seriously in response of the Go Green campaign. Even so, almost half of them disagree. From this result, we realize that even though majority of the respondents agreed on the campaign but they are not yet ready to implement it in their own lives. On the other hand, 100% of them agreed to recycle their rubbish if
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the university administration prepares the recycle bin in each hostel, cafeteria and kuliyyah. Most of the respondents totally agree that creating a campaign is the best way to educate IIUM students on the consequences of not practicing the green living. Therefore, a weekly promotion on such issue should be conducted as it is very beneficial for the understanding of IIUM students on the issue. The campaign should include the creation of posters that may give great impacts on the students mind and influence them so that they are be able to know practical action that can be taken daily. Thus, promoting the green living campaigns will in no doubt improve their understanding of the issue.

5.0 Conclusion This research is conducted to study the awareness of IIUM students Go Green campaign. The primary data were collected randomly by distributing
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questionnaires to 30 students from the programs of the Kulliyah of Science which all are from biotechnology. Through the survey completed by the respondents, several conclusions can be drawn based on the findings of the study in which answers all three research questions: 1. This study has shown that most of the respondents are fully aware of the Go Green issues. They are also able to provide the reasons for the campaign such as global warming and animal extinction.
2. Through the investigation, the level of participation of the

students is still surprisingly very low but steadily increasing.

3. The creation of campaign and the implementation of formal rules

and regulation are acknowledged as the best way to educate and push the general population of IIUM on the green living issue. Lastly, although green living can be costly in some extend, the very least effort that students can practice are recycling their garbage.

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6.0 Recommendation 6.1 Based on the findings and conclusion of the study, here are several recommendations to be considered:
1. IIUM administration should prepare recycle bins at least one set

on each hostel, each kuliyyah and each cafeteria. 2. Monthly campaigns on different topics under the Go Green issue conducted by the students themselves to promote sense of responsibility. 3. The students of IIUM should know and understand the effects of harming the environment and be aware of the issue by actively participating in a campaign or studying its effects as a general knowledge for their lives.

6.2 Future research: Since this study had only focused on the IIUM students, it is recommended that further studies be carried out on students from other universities to see whether there are any similarities in the findings. Furthermore, further research could also explore the differences in the level of understanding of other universities students on the awareness of the Go Green campaign and their overall participation level on the campaign.
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Reference List Peterson, John. (March, 2002). The Environment and Oberlin: An Update. Oberlin Alumni Magazine. Retrieved on December 8,2011 from http://www.oberlin.edu/alummag/oamcurrent/oam_summer2002/feat_e nviro.htm Rhodes-Conway, Satya et al.2005. New Energy for Campuses: Energy Saving Policies For Colleges and Universities. [report online], Apollo Alliance. Retrieved on September 9, 2001 from http://www.apolloalliance.org/docUploads/rp%2Dnew%5Fenergy %5Fcampus%2Ep d

Sharp, Leith.. ( 2003, January 10). Green Campuses: The Road from Little Victories To Synthetic Transformation. Harvard Green Campus Initiative. Retrieved on September 9, 2011 from
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Taubes, G,. (2011,April 13). Is Polystyrene Container Dangerous?. The New York Times. Retrieved on October 19, 2011, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag17polystyrenet.html?pagewanted=all

Wee, H.L., Ho, H.K., & Li, S.C., ( 2002). Public Awareness of Chemical Waste in Singapore. Singapore Medical Journal, 43(3), 120-125

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