| Research Abstract |
(1) PURPOSE :
The purpose of this study was to discover a way to create an ecologically sustainable future for Japanese people. It is well known that such a way can only be realized if people change their lifestyles to be more ecologically sensible ones. But, this change is, undoubtedly, a very difficult one to make. This research was performed by means of a questionnaire survey, a wind power experiment and case studies of social systems.
(2) RESULTS :
a. Questionnaire Survey
The environmental questionnaire survey was given to parents and to students of the two colleges and two high schools of Anjo Gakuen Foundation between November and December, 2000. The number of the returned responses were 842 out of the 1600 parents of the high school students, 305 out of 871 parents of the college students, and 387 out of 582 students (response rates were 34.4%, 30.5% and 66.5%, respectively) The questions were concerned with environmental awareness, making cooperative actions for waste reduction, re
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cycling resources, energy saving, and the cooperative works for the government projects and non-government organizations. The data was analyzed statistically by the use of Windows SPSS.
b. The wind Power Experiments
We constructed wind power facilities on the Toyota campus in order to encourage the environmental awareness of the students. And, also, we tried to calculate the resource consumption and environmental burdens associated with the wind power facilities by the use of a LCA (life cycle assessment) software. We intend to continue to collect data for this experiment.
c. The Case Studies for Social Systems :
We surveyed a number of social systems to promote the national and local environmental agendas in the advanced countryside, towns and villages. They are Freiburg in Germany, Yakushima Island, Tomamae town and Maetsue Village in Japan.
(3) CONCLUSION :
Although most of the Japanese parents and students surveyed had a fair degree of knowledge about global environmental issues, they did not appear to understand the degree of crisis relating to each of the issues. Large numbers of them felt there would be some difficulty in changing their life styles from one of consuming resources/energy and of increasing the amount wastes to ones that would be more "eco-friendly". We assigned ECO POINTS for aspects of the subjects' lifestyles. The points of the students were relatively low compared to those of their parents. The environmental awareness and actions of the respondents had not only related to the local environment where they live, but also to the projects and registrations of the local governments.
We concluded that there was a need for enforcement of environmental education for students in schools and parents in society. The national and the local government, we also concluded, should take more effective means and undertake proper projects dealing with environmental issues to set examples for the community of ordinary citizens. Less
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