Religion role on community movement for solid waste management

The amount of solid waste in Thailand has increased rapidly over the last ten years. The in-creasing amount of garbage has cause both social and health problems. It is important to mo-tivation to change the attitude and behaviour on waste management. This study aims to de-velop a suitable strategy and cooperative to increase awareness of solid waste management in the community. Participatory Action Research was used as the tool to encourage social learning and development. The data were obtained through participation observations, focus groups, and questionnaires. It was found that most of the waste in households was recyclable waste (49.24%) and food waste (49.24%). People lack the ability to separate garbage. The monks, involved stakeholder in the entire waste management system, helped publicize the campaign on Buddhist holy days, during religious ceremonies and taught people to be respon-sible for the garbage problem in their community as well. It was found that religion encouraged the people to separate recycled garbage and established cooperation from all sectors in the community. The results obtained suggest that religion is not only the moral center of the com-munity, but also the center of community empowerment to consciousness in waste manage-ment. © 2017 by Widener University.