Green Campaign - Its Role in Creating Awareness Among

Malaysian to Protect the Environment

Nowadays green campaign is one of the hot topics among the Malaysian. The main objective
of green campaign is to create awareness among the public to protect our environment.
Green campaign not only popular in Malaysia, is also very famous in foreign country. In
Malaysia there are a lot of organization organizing green campaign such as Environmental
Protection Society Malaysia (EPSM), Malaysia Environment NGOs (MENGO) and Treat
Every Environment Special Sdn. Bhd. (TRESS). Furthermore, from the researcher research,
there also few business company supporting on green campaign such as Panasonic,
TESCO, and Nippon weather paint company.
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EPSM was founded on 11 January 1974 at University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. The
society founded by a group of Malaysian who concerned about protecting the environment.
EPSM is non-profit organization it runs by an elected executive committee on an entirely
voluntary. The main objective of EPSM is to control the activities that will cause harm to the
environment. In EPSM organization, public relations (PR) roles help to do publicity for the
organization and at the same times help the create awareness among the public.

MENGO was formed under Danish International Development Assistance in November 2001.
MENGO was an active society's, it can give impact on the decision making at the levels of
Malaysia society. The organization gives support to the Government of Malaysia on
environment policies. The mission of MENGO is to protect the environment and maintain the
agenda level same as local, national and international. The organization had organized a
campaign on 19 April 2009 in Penang Bosch Hall to discuss plastic bags should be ban or
not to ban.
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TREES is a local non-profit environment organization. The organization founded in February
1995. The main purpose of TREES is to educate public the important of protect our
environment and reduce negative impact for our environment. TREES organizations had
organized two successfully programs in this year. On 14th February 2009 they had organized
Valentine's Pledge for Mother Earth, the program use to encourage the public send a
photograph with a caption that how you protect the environment so that can share with each
others. Furthermore, on 13th March the organization organized community recycling
campaign at Ampang, this activity help to reduce the air pollution. There are a lot of people
participated in these two events. The events are very meaningful and bring benefit to our
environment.

Panasonic Sdn. Bhd. is one of the electronic company's had designed out an eco-refrigerator
to support green campaign and the product have successfully launched in Malaysia. It's able
to be self adjusting electricity regulator that reduces the wastage. Compare with other brand
of refrigerator the Panasonic refrigerator able to save 40% of the electricity. It helps fight
global warming and save money all the time. Panasonic electronic company in United State
America also concerns for environmental protection and sustainability. The company's
practices prudent, sustainable use of the earth's natural resources and the protection of the
environment. Together with many benefits associated with the use and enjoyment of new
technologies comes with responsibility that do not take lightly. The company hopes that this
commitment able to protecting the environment continues to earn public trust and support.
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Besides that, TESCO hypermarket had designed an eco-friendly recycle bag. The purpose is
to encourage the consumer to use the recycle bag instead of using the plastic bag. Those
consumers who using the recycle bag when purchase the goods can gain extra point for the
member card. Furthermore, all the Tesco in Penang have applied the same rules that set by
the Penang state government. Tesco hypermarket in Penang state not give out plastic bag
for the consumer on every Monday. In foreign country, Tesco is the most environmentally
friendly supermarket. Tesco had wins a award for being the best big company for corporate
environmental strategy, has invested 115m in energy-saving technology for its stores in the
past two years and is working hard to create the zero carbon supermarket of the future.

Malaysia Government also supporting green campaign. On 28th March 2009 the government
encouraged whole Malaysian to switch off their lights from 8.00pm until 9.00pm. KL tower
and 8TV is one of the company's supporting this program. In this program, PR practitioners
help the government to spread out all the information and do publicity on the activities.
Besides, to support green campaign Penang state had already ban the consumer using
plastic bag on every Monday. The purpose of this program is to encourage the consumer use
recycle bag for those consumers who require for a plastic bag on Monday need to pay 20sen
for it.

Thus, University Sains Malaysia (USM) an university in Malaysia shows support on green
campaign. USM have organized a lot of campaign encourage the student to take care of our
environment. Besides that, USM also joined with Tupperware Company to support the green
campaign. Tupperware Company provided each student who studies in USM a plastic
container for daily use. When student need to packing the food can use plastic container
instate of using plastic bag. This help to save one plastic bag for our mother earth.

Not only Malaysia had green campaign there are a lot of green campaign in the foreign. Such
as Disney land from foreign country had set up a Center for Health, Environment and Justice
(CHEJ) found that Walt Disney World uses more than 80 extremely toxic cleaners, as
opposed to just 12 that are non-toxic and which are used in the animal park out of safety
concerns for the animals. Disney land is for children to pay visit in the park. At the same time
it also can let the children "bathe, eat and play." CHEJ and community groups in Florida are
urging Disney to use safer cleaning products for the sake of the children.

The main objective of the researcher is to create awareness among the public to be more
concern about our environment and to let the public knows that protect our environment is
our responsible.

There are few journals collected by the researcher for references purpose. From the
researcher research, a campaign use to organize a series of activities to try to achieve
something. A purpose of a campaign is use to get attention from the public and to promote a
new product, or launch a new product. For a PR campaign mostly use to do publicity and
create awareness among the public.

According to Singh (2007), nowadays our environment facing a lot of problem and it became
more serious. Hopefully the committee can influence all the Malaysia society care about the
environment and the problem can be solves easily. Toward EPSM the public able to
understand what is green campaign.

As a parent needs to educate their children how to take care our environment. Reading about
environment is not boring it is very helpful to everyone. Know about environment issues help
to enlarge personal knowledge about something new. Do not let media to confuse us, as a
responsible Malaysian we should use simple way to show others public what to do.
(Wahid,2009).

Ohana (2007) define that environment education is very important. This education will
influence the future individual human beings, the nation, and the whole world. The world
environment will be affect depends on how human use science and technology in future. So
that, science education must be prepare for the student. This because most of the decisions
makes by the student will be revolves around issues of the environment in future.

Adebobola (2004) argue that the environmental problem become more serious this because
the industrial growth very fast. Although some regions were virtually untouched by the
inhabitants but there still got large areas been affected. This cause the organization
Environment department of Africa concern in the major coexisting issues in the world.

Penang government had come out a new rules stated that start from 1st July no plastic bag
on every Monday. There are a lot of people disagree with the rules. This because they say is
not convenience when the purchase foods and goods make them feel so inconvenient.
According to Yu (2009) mostly consumer using plastic bag for a rubbish bag if really want to
apply the rules, Penang government need support form media. According to Yeap (2009), he
claimed that every people should follow the rules and at the same time can educate and
encourage others to recycle.

From the researcher research, there are two theories can be applied in the research. There
are Interaction Theory and Klapper's Reinforcement Theory.

Interaction theory means influence a medium has over its audience is proportional to the
amount of effort involved in consuming it. According to Ken Spencer humans remember only
10 percent of what they read, 20 percent of what they hear, and 30 percent of what they see.
However, memory improves to 50 percent for those who see and hear something, and 90
percent if the person is actively involved in the process or event instead of merely observing
it. This theory can be illustrated by considering the results of staged events involving
audience participation. So, to encourage the public to take in green campaign, the
organization needs to encourage the public to participate in the activities.

Klapper's Reinforcement Theory maintains the media cannot create opinions from scratch,
but can be effective in reinforcing existing beliefs and attitudes or bringing latent beliefs and
attitudes to the surface and encouraging individuals to act on them. In this theory, shows that
even media not that powerful can influence people thinking but at least can lead the public to
concern about the environment issues.

Qualitative research is a field of inquiry applicable to many disciplines and subject matters.
Qualitative researchers aim to gather an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the
reasons that govern such behavior. The qualitative method investigates the why and how of
decision making. Hence, smaller but focused samples are more often needed, rather than
large random samples

Quantitative research means the variable under consideration should be measured. It is an
element of precision, as it uses numbers to quantify result. The process of measurement is
central to quantitative research because it provides the fundamental connection between
empirical observation and mathematical expression of quantitative relationships. The term
quantitative research is most often used in the social sciences in contrast to qualitative
research.

The researcher use both quantitative and qualitative research method in this study. In which
includes the survey questionnaire and intensive interview to the relevant people so that the
researcher can get more detail information.

There will be 11 questions for the survey questionnaire. Inside the questionnaire include, 5
dichotomous response questions, 3 multiple-choice questions and 3 open-ended questions.
All the survey questions will be set based on the relevant to green campaign.

There are 100 copies questionnaire will be distributed to UTAR and KTAR student in Perak
campus. Both UTAR and KTAR will be distributed 50 copies of questionnaire, from 50 set of
questionnaire will be divided to half that mean 25 set, for both male and female. The reason
that the researcher choose UTAR Perak campus because it is the biggest campus in whole
Malaysia compare to other campus. Besides that, the researcher also had chosen KTAR
Perak campus to distribute the questionnaire it is because the Perak campus is second
largest and newest campus in Malaysia. Thus, the researcher choose UTAR and KTAR
student as target audience, is because compare to other university UTAR and KTAR have
more student and it can represent the majority of teenagers.

The researcher set target audience as college and university student the age range is around
18 to 23. It is because college and university student will become new generation in future of
the society. So, their perception of green campaign is very important for the research.

Besides that, an intensive interview will be conducted with ESPM Manager Gurmit Singh to
understand the view of him and why he form up ESPM organization. He is the advisor and
founder president of ESPM. Another interview will conducted with the Panasonic product
marketing general manager Cheng Chee Chung to understand why Panasonic need to came
up the eco-refrigerator.

Both interviews will take around one hour. The researcher had set up 2 set of different
interview questions for the EPSM president and Panasonic marketing general manager
because both of them have their own perception toward green campaign.