Waste Segregation in Yazd: Awareness, Attitude and Performance of Yazd Households and Related Ecological Factors

Introduction: Generation of waste, on the one hand, and recycling it, on the other hand, are the most important challenges of waste management.  Regarding this approach, waste segregation of the source by households is the most suitable and affordable component in the waste management. This study was conducted in Yazd city with the aim of determining the household's awareness, attitude, and performance of households toward waste segregation and related ecological factors. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study carried out in 2019 on 386 households in Yazd city. They were selected by simple random sampling. Data were collected thorough a researcher-made questionnaire. Non-parametric, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were also used to investigate the relationship between ecological factors and awareness, attitude and performance. All analyses were done in spss-24 software considering a significance level of 5%  Results: 53.6% of the households segregated their recyclable waste. Among the ecological factors included in this research, factors such as family member's cooperation, sufficient space allocated for waste storage, paying attention to environment's protection, informing on the exact collection time for garbage, regular garbage collection by municipality, waiting time regarding garbage collection, and execution time of garbage collection, and providing regular education by municipal authorities had a significant relationship with people's participation in waste segregation. Conclusion: The level of awareness, attitude and performance of Yazd citizens regarding the waste segregation at the source is medium, and the ecological factors are effective in this regard. More education is recommended to attract the participation of citizens and entrust important and sensitive parts of waste management to private companies and institutions.