Environmental Chemistry Education for Encouraging the

Willingness to Participate in Sustainable Consumption of Food

Familia Novita Simanjuntak

Faculty of Teachers’ Training and Education, Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta

Keywords: Willingness to Participate, Sustainable Consumption, Environmental Chemistry Education, Young Adult.

Abstract: Sustainable consumption of food can be achieved by applying the nutritious, diverse, and balance (NUDIBA)

food consumption in daily life. Indonesian Ministry of Health promotes the NUDIBA food consumption as

the integrated program for Movement of Healthy Society of Indonesia which had been started since 2014.

This paper is a literature review on environmental chemistry education in higher education to achieve

sustainable consumption of food by encouraging the willingness to participate. The aim of this literature

review is to propose environmental chemistry education for encouraging the willingness to participate in

young adults’ sustainable consumption of food. The core topic of environmental chemistry is the importance

of environmental chemistry knowledge and skill to preserve and maintain the biodiversity to achieve food

security by sustainable consumption of food. The learning approach uses daily (healthy) life needs of food as

the problem based learning. The target of environmental chemistry education is the under-graduate students

who have development tasks as young adult.The hypothesis is healthy life achievement through NUDIBA

food consumption will encourage the willingness to participate of young adults in sustainable consumption.

1 INTRODUCTION

The under-graduate students of Chemistry Education

Study Program are the future chemistry teacher as

well as a young adult who are the future generations

of a nation which is the Republic of Indonesia. The

Republic of Indonesia is a democratic country which

needs young adults to be an active civil society. The

young adults have a significant period in their life for

becoming an engaged citizen (Reichert, 2017).

Engaging the young adult to be an active civic

society need a supportive effort such as encouraging

their willingness to participate (Schelbe et.al., 2015).

Education can deliver the supportive effort to engage

young adult citizenship (Keating & Janmaat,

2015).Van Deth (2016) described individual

resources-equipment based on education, income,

and social position affects people’s willingness to

participate politically.

Specifically, education enhances participation by

developing skills that are relevant to politics such as

the ability to speak and write, the knowledge of how

to cope in an organizational setting (Persson, 2015).

So that, individuals with higher education participate

to a larger extent in political activities because of their

civic skills and political knowledge are better than

individuals with lower education.

The main idea of this paper is environmental

chemistry education to encourage young adults’

willingness to participate by developing sustainable

consumption of food to achieve food security (first

target of SDGs).Environmental chemistry education

develops understanding what happend in nature so it

will maintain the capability of students to predict the

fate and chemical reactions that natural compounds

and artificial pollutans may undergo (Ibanez et al.,

2010).

Ibanez et al. (2010) explains that environmental

chemistry knowledge becomes fundamental to

understand the interaction between what happens in

nature and the chemical reaction to predict what may

happen to certain compounds if discharged into the

environment, and if organism (human or not) come

into contact with them (Ali, Khan, and Ilahi, 2019).

Gasper, Shah, and Tankha (2019) defined sustainable

consumption related to sustainable management and

efficient use of natural resources and environmental

management of chemicals and all wastes. It also

ensures universal access to relevant information and

awareness for sustainable development and lifestyle,

or reduce food losses, chemical, and waste pollution

144

Simanjuntak, F.

Environmental Chemistry Education for Encouraging the Willingness to Participate in Sustainable Consumption of Food.

DOI: 10.5220/0010013001440149

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Social and Political Development (ICOSOP 3 2019) - Social Engineering Governance for the People, Technology and Infrastructure in

Revolution Industry 4.0, pages 144-149

ISBN: 978-989-758-472-5

and waste generation. So, environmental chemistry

education should encourage students to elaborates

their knowledge as the fundamental to participate in

preserving the natural resources and environment,

especially related to food security.

Since 2014, Health Ministry of Indonesia

hadprovided the balanced nutritionguidelines to

support the sustainable consumption of food through

the nutritious, diverse, and balance (NUDIBA) eating

(Kementrian Kesehatan, 2014). The guidelines help

people to choose and decide the right and balanced

nutritions based on their physical and psychological

needs. Environmental chemistry knowledge can be

the fundamental of making the choice and decision.

Therefore, as the future chemistry teacher, it is

important to be able to elaborate the environmental

chemistry knowledge to support the healthy (Fadila

and Kurniawati, 2018) and sustainable eating habits

to achieve the quality of human resources of

Indonesia (Cornia and Adriani, 2018). The

elaboration is also important to practice the problem-

based learning approachin schoolthat enhances

students’ problem-solving skills in chemistry (Valdez

and Bungihan, 2019).

This paper aims to propose environmental

chemistry education to encourage the willingness to

participate in young adults' sustainable consumption

of food. The young adults mean the under-graduate

students (higher education) who age between 20-25

years old.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This literature review focus on young adults who are

studying chemistry teacher education and becoming

future active participants in ecologically,

economically, or societally sustainable consumption

of food. The environmental chemistry is proposed in

line with Burmeister and Eilks (2013) to support a

strong sustainable movement in an industrialized

society by maintaining the overall supply levels of

energy and goods, and at the same time, decreasing

the amounts of environmentally hazardous

substances and raw material consumption.

The chemistry knowledge as the core domain

defines the knowledge characteristics and production

processes of chemistry as learning goals and

outcomes. Together with the teacher in class, young

adults as learners ask questions about what concepts

and methods of chemistry are relevant to sustainable

consumption of food; how chemistry knowledge

processes are generated to analyze the environment

impact; how to adapt and apply relevant chemistry

theory to produce and consume food ecologically

sustainable; what environmental standards and

criteria drive knowledge processes in chemistry; and

how do we bond the chemistry knowledge with the

behavior of food sustainable consumption (Erduran

and Kaya, 2019).

2.1 Environmental Chemistry

Education

Wright (2004) explained environmental chemistry as

a study of human interaction with the environment

regarding the source, reactions, transport, effect and

fate of chemical species in the air, water, and soil, and

the effect of human activity upon these

circumstances. Environmental chemistry is a multi-

disciplinary science involving chemistry, physics, life

science, agriculture, medical science, public health,

sanitary engineering, etc.

Environmental chemistry education becomes an

important study when the exponential growth of the

human population causes extra-large disruption to the

natural environment to support human living and

impacts the carrying capacity of the earth (O'neill,

2017). In other words, we can define environmental

chemistry as a study of the role of chemical elements

in the synthesis and decomposition of natural

materials of all kinds, including the changes

especially brought about by human actions.

Ibanez et al. (2010) explained that the

fundamental of environmental chemistry to enhance

the knowledge so human can understand what

happens in nature and predict the fate and the

chemical reactions that may undergo between natural

compounds and artificial pollutants. Further, the

knowledge will support the way of thinking to

understand the interactions so that predict what may

happen to certain compounds if discharged into the

environment and if organism (human or not) come

into contact with them.

Virtually, Hites and Raff (2013) stated that

environmental chemistry can provide data input for

risk assessment and treatability studies, and determine

the required level of environmental quality or control

needed in a system. The data are particularly important

for making cost-effective decisions about discharge

treatments or risk-management decisions or

determining environmental-impact mitigation or

remediation measures.

Environmental chemistry education drives

individual green chemistry-based thinking and action

(Mudhoo & Sharma, 2010) that support political,

economic, and social developments. The

developments are highly interactive and have

Environmental Chemistry Education for Encouraging the Willingness to Participate in Sustainable Consumption of Food

145

desireable or undesirable consequences from the

viewpoint of energy consumption, ecological, and

environmental degradation.

Environmental chemistry education proposed in

this literature review is similar to the research of

green chemistry conducted by Karpudewan, Ismail &

Roth (2012) in Malaysia to improve science,

especially teacher, education. Green chemistry in the

research leads to a potential changing relevant to

chemistry concepts, attitudes, pro-environmental

values, and motivations for acting pro-

environmentally. Deeper, green chemistry allows

students to participate in decision making over real

issues in their everyday life, and drive them to

contribute to global environmental problems by

acting appropriately on local matters.

This literature review intends to promote

environmental chemistry education for the science

teacher to build and sustain lively scientific

communities as a potential contribution to bring about

sustainable practices related to the environment and

environmental health so that the teachers can address

global problems and, at the same time, maintain the

high level of scientific literacy among the general

public. The environmental chemistry education

should be able to encourage the students to actively

participate in decision making, especially over the

sustainable consumption of food issues based on their

everyday life at home, schools and anywhere they do

various kinds of activities, supported by a teacher role

who has a high levels of chemistry literacy related to

environmental chemistry.

As long-life learning, environmental chemistry

education which promotes sustainable development

through the sustainable consumption of food should

be the aims and values, practices, methods and

knowledge that create a belief within the science

teacher to improve and sustain their role along the

chemistry learning process in school. Erduran &

Kaya (2019) defined the beliefs support the complex

epistemic ideas on science teachers through the

everyday scenario, using analogies, and visual

representations to communicate their ideas.

Environmental chemistry-based beliefs become

the core of chemistry philosophy internalization that

leads to science teachers’ identity development. This

identity will improve the chemistry interest between

teachers that impact to chemistry teaching especially

in the classroom and to the society where they get

involved (Erduran and Kaya, 2019).

2.2 The Willingness to Participate

Individual willingness to participate is an important

means for shifting the pace of sustainable

consumption of food at the local level. Kalkbrenner

& Roosen (2016) defined participation as a process

that happens within persons to take part in decision

making in institutions or programs or environments

that affect them. The willingness to participate can be

initiated by high concern over certain issues that

become part of someone’s beliefs.

Lilleker and Koc-Michalska (2017) stated that

intrinsic motivation is a primary driver of individual

willingness to participate, though it is still argued as

the conventional acts of political participation.

Beliefs are the part of intrinsic motivation together

with self-efficacy, empowerment, and feeling of

influencing decision-makers. Further, willingness to

participate is also driven by extrinsic motivations,

especially the mobile tactics (online and offline) with

its mediating effect. The extrinsic motivations have

the strongest explanatory power independent of the

sphere of activity even impact the lack of meaning to

the individual intrinsic motivations. The research

suggested encouragement by non-governmental

campaigning organizations encounter social media

users to perform simple acts in support of non-

contentious causes.

A classroom can be the media for developing the

students’ willingness to participate in sustainable

consumption of foodthrough civic knowledge and

involvement in decision making (Eckstein, Noack, &

Gniewosz, 2012; Castillo, et.al., 2015; Persson,

2015). Environmental chemistry-based literacy of

science teacher can mitigate the gap of political

participation in the classroom by improving the civic

knowledge and implying sustainable consumption of

food problem-based learning (Karpudewan et al.,

2012; Persson, 2015; Valdez and Bungihan, 2019).

Dabholkar (2015) stated that learning process in class

can support the civic knowledge improvement by

internalizing aims and values, practices, methods and

knowledge of sustainable consumption of food.

Van Deth (2016) described political participation

as an individual's movement that becomes formal

institutions with more power in decision making. If

environmental chemistry-based learning, especially

for science teachers education, to support sustainable

development is integrated into the higher education

curriculum, Clifford and Montgomery (2015) stated

that the individual movement over sustainable

consumption of food will become the institutional

learning outcomes which influence the political

participation at the local level.

ICOSOP 3 2019 - International Conference on Social Political Development (ICOSOP) 3

146

2.3 Sustainable Consumption of Food

Ensuring sustainable consumption and production

patterns is the Target 12 of SDGs which includes 8

specific targets and 3 targets related to Means of

Implementation (Gasper, Shah, and Tankha, 2019).

The sustainability is mainly viewed through the lens

of production efficiency related to the use of natural

resources, food production and supply related losses,

management of chemicals and wastes, sustainable

corporate practices and reporting, and sustainable

public procurement.

Virtually, environmental chemistry education at

schools directly can not achieve the Target 12 of

SDGs, but it intends to develop pro-environment

behaviors by reducing food waste at the consumer

level and promote voluntary consumer action to

ensure universal access to information for sustainable

lifestyles. Environmental chemistry will become the

strong language to emphasizes voluntary and indirect

policy approaches for achieving sustainable

consumption and production patterns, and promote

sustainable public procurement or provide people

with relevant information and awareness as a purely

voluntary initiative.

Society identifies sustainable consumption of

food as green product consumption. The findings of

Kumar and Ghodeswar (2015) explained that the

willingness to participate in sustainable consumption

is to nurture human helath (Willett, et.al., 2019) and

support environmental protection driven by the

realization of environmental responsibilities,

inclination towards searching green product-related

information and learning about green products. The

decision to purchase green products is also supported

by the existence of environmental friendliness of

companies and social appeal.

Sustainable consumption of food means access is

wide open for people to get the desirable and needed

food and provide various choices. The perception and

preferences of local food become important factors to

achieve the sustainable consumption of food

(Feldmann and Hamm, 2015). The awareness of food

origin will raise the perception and preferences of

local food.

Environmental chemistry education should focus

on science teachers’ perception development that

leads to the initiative of sustainable procurement of

food. The perception will be a positive determinant

for building the identity of a teacher’s role in the

classroom.This identity continuously constructs a

sustainable system in food consumption along the

learning process in class.

One topic related to sustainable consumption of

food is about biodiversity on our plate to achieve the

ideal health, physically and psychologically, through

NUDIBA (nutritious, diverse, and balance) eating.

Since 2014, the Health Ministry of Indonesia had

been promoting this NUDIBA eating as a positive

determinant for human resources development in

Indonesia. The learning outcome of environmental

chemistry is to improve the chemistry knowledge and

literacy to be able to choose and decide the right and

balanced nutritious based on physical and

psychological needs.

2.4 Young Adults

The targets of this literature review are the young

adults as under-graduate students (higher education)

who age between 20-25 years old. Jessor, Donovan,

and Costa (1994) described that the young adulthood

is a time of new experiences and expanded

responsibilities. Young adults may enter the labor

market for the first time, commit to themselves to

political and religious philosophies that shape their

attitudes and guide their behavior, and dissolve old

friendship ties and establish new ones. Young adult

participants engages a variety of life domain and

reveals a variety of outlooks and life-styles. Their

political, religious, and moral viewpoints and

attitudes reflected a mix of liberalism and

conventionality.

Nagaoka et al. (2015) stated that preparing young

adult for meaningful, productive futures requires

coordinated efforts and intentional practices by adults

across youth inhabit ona daily basis. The preparation

has four foundational components, they are self-

regulation, knowledge, mindsets, and values.

Young adult has a significant period in life for

becoming an engaged citizen (Reichert, 2017) who is

actively participate in political issues. The result

stated the young adult conceptions of good

citizenship as engaged or duty-based participation.

Environmental chemistry knowledge will be the

fundamental of thinking for young adults to acquire

information about healthier products such as for

healthy tooth wear and other oral health care

(Verploegen and Schuller, 2019). Deeper, knowledge

of environmental chemistry will rigor the science of

conservation to develop youth-focused community

and citizen science which are the agents for

conservation and environment (Ballard, Dixon, and

Harris, 2017).

Environmental Chemistry Education for Encouraging the Willingness to Participate in Sustainable Consumption of Food

147

3 CONCLUSIONS

Environmental chemistry education for science,

especially chemistry, teachers’ education should be

able to develop beliefs within the teachers as the

identity of science teaching in class. The beliefs will

grow up become intrinsic motivation for teachers to

participate in sustainable consumption of food. As

stated by Erduran and Kaya (2019) that

environmental chemistry-based beliefs is the core for

chemistry philosophy internalization to lead the

teachers’ identity development which improve the

chemistry interest and impact the chemistry learning

in class and the society they get involved.

The chemistry teachers whose belief based on

environmental science will be able to create a daily

life-based learning and multi disciplinary thinking so

the chemistry learning at school can be the media for

developing the students’ willingness to participate in

sustainable consumption of food through civic

knowledge (Eckstein, Noack, and Gniewosz, 2012;

Persson, 2015). In line with Castillo et al. (2015) that

classroom can encourage the students to involve in

decision making.

This literature review intends to approach the

young adults who will be the chemistry teacher and

the environmental chemistry is one of subjects in the

curriculum of chemistry education. Environmental

chemistry-based literacy can mitigate the gap of

political participation in class (Karpudewan et al.,

2012; Valdez& Bungihan, 2019) and develop the

knowledge to acquire information about healthier

products (Verploegen and Schuller, 2019) include the

aims and values, practices, and methods of

sustainable consumption of food (Dabholkar, 2015).

Hopefully, at the end of the learning process, the

knowledge and literacy of environmental chemistry

become the rigorous science to develop youth-

focused chemistry teachers as agents for conservation

and environment (Ballard, Dixon, and Harris, 2017).

As part of society, chemistry teachers can also

involve in community education to support the

sustainable consumption of food by enhancing human

health and protecting the environment through the

implementation of NUDIBA eating in daily life

andactively promotion/socialization towards the

society. This situation will bring movement to

achieve the food security and human development

index.

REFERENCES

Ali, H., Khan, E. and Ilahi, I., 2019. Environmental

chemistry and ecotoxicology of hazardous heavy

metals: environmental persistence, toxicity, and

bioaccumulation. Journal of Chemistry, 2019.

Ballard, H. L., Dixon, C. G., & Harris, E. M. 2017. Youth-

focused citizen science: Examining the role of

environmental science learning and agency for

conservation. Biological Conservation, 208, 65-75.

Burmeister, M., & Eilks, I. 2013. Using Participatory

Action Research to develop a course module on

Education for Sustainable Development in pre-service

chemistry teacher education. CEPS journal, 3(1), 59-

78.

Castillo, J.C., Miranda, D., Bonhomme, M., Cox, C., &

Bascopé, M. 2015. Mitigating the political participation

gap from the school: The roles of civic knowledge and

classroom climate. Journal of Youth Studies, 18(1), pp.

16-35.

Clifford, V. and Montgomery, C., 2015. Transformative

learning through internationalization of the curriculum

in higher education. Journal of Transformative

Education, 13(1), 46-64.

Cornia, I.G., & Adriani, M., 2018. Hubungan antara asupan

zat gizi makro dan status gizi dengan kebugaran

jasmani mahasiswa ukm taekwondo. Amerta

Nutrition, 2(1), 90-96.

Dabholkar, P. A. 2015. How to improve perceived service

quality by increasing customer participation.

In Proceedings of the 1990 academy of marketing

science (AMS) annual conference, 483-487. Springer,

Cham.

Eckstein, K., Noack, P. and Gniewosz, B., 2012. Attitudes

toward political engagement and willingness to

participate in politics: Trajectories throughout

adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 35(3), 485-495.

Erduran, S., & Kaya, E., 2019. Transforming teacher

education through the epistemic core of chemistry,

Springer. UK.

Fadila, I., & Kurniawati, H., 2018. Analisis pengetahuan

gizi terkait pedoman gizi seimbang dan kadar hb remaja

puteri. BIOTIKA Jurnal Ilmiah Biologi, 16(1), 12 – 19.

Feldmann, C., Hamm, U., 2015. Consumers’ perceptions

and preferences for local food: A review. Food Quality

and Preference, 40, 152-164.

Gasper, D., Shah, A., & Tankha, S., 2019. The framing of

sustainable consumption and production in SDG

12. Global Policy, 10, 83 – 95.

Hites, R.A., & Raff, J.D. 2013. Elements of environmental

chemistry. John Wiley & Sons.

Ibanez, J. G., Hernandez-Esparza, M., Doria-Serrano, C.,

Fregoso-Infante,A., & Singh, M.M.,

2010. Environmental chemistry: fundamentals.

Springer Science & Business Media.

Jessor, R., Donovan, J. E., & Costa, F.M., 1994. Beyond

adolescence: Problem behaviour and young adult

development, Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.

Kalkbrenner, B.J., & Roosen, J., 2016. Citizens’

willingness to participate in local renewable energy

ICOSOP 3 2019 - International Conference on Social Political Development (ICOSOP) 3

148

projects: The role of community and trust in

Germany. Energy Research & Social Science, 13, 60 –

70.

Karpudewan, M., Ismail, Z., & Roth, W.M., 2012. Ensuring

sustainability of tomorrow through green chemistry

integrated with sustainable development concepts

(SDCs). Chemistry Education Research and

Practice, 13(2), 120-127.

Keating, A., & Janmaat, J.G., 2015. Education through

citizenship at school: Do school activities have a lasting

impact on youth political engagement? Parliamentary

Affairs, 69(2), 409-429.

Kementrian Kesehatan, R.I., 2014. Pedoman gizi seimbang,

Kemenkes RI. Jakarta.

Lilleker, D.G. and Koc-Michalska, K., 2017. What drives

political participation? Motivations and mobilization in

a digital age. Political Communication, 34(1), 21 – 43.

Mudhoo, A., & Sharma, S.K., 2010. Green chemistry for

environmental sustainability, Boca Raton. CRC Press.

Nagaoka, J., Farrington, C.A., Ehrlich, S.B., & Heath, R.D.,

2015. Foundations for young adult success: A

developmental framework. Concept Paper for Research

and Practice. University of Chicago Consortium on

Chicago School Research. 1313 East 60th Street,

Chicago, IL 60637.

O'neill, P., 2017. Environmental chemistry, Routledge.

London.

Persson, M., 2015. Education and political

participation. British Journal of Political

Science, 45(3), 689-703.

Reichert, F., 2017. Young adults’ conceptions of

‘good’citizenship behaviours: A latent class

analysis. Journal of Civil Society, 13(1), 90-110.

Schelbe, L., Chanmugam, A., Moses, T., Saltzburg, S.,

Williams, L.R., Letendre, J., 2015. Youth participation

in qualitative research: Challenges and

possibilities. Qualitative Social Work, 14(4), 504 –

521.

Valdez, J.E., & Bungihan, M.E., 2019. Problem-Based

Learning Approach Enhances the Problem Solving

Skills in Chemistry of High School Students. Journal of

Technology and Science Education, 9(3), 282 – 294.

Van Deth, J.W., 2016. Political participation. The

International Encyclopedia of Political

Communication,12. doi:10.1002/9781118541555.wbie

pc171.

Verploegen, V.J.N., & Schuller, A.A., 2019. Erosive tooth

wear: Knowledge among young adults and their

preferred information sources. International journal of

dental hygiene, 17(1), 85-92.

Willett, W., Rockström, J., Loken, B., Springmann, M.,

Lang, T., Vermeulen, S.,& Jonell, M., 2019. Food in the

Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Commission on

healthy diets from sustainable food systems. The

Lancet, 393(10170), 447 – 492.

Wright, J., 2004. Environmental chemistry, Routledge.

London.

Environmental Chemistry Education for Encouraging the Willingness to Participate in Sustainable Consumption of Food

149