Indian Journal of Fundamental and Applied Life Sciences ISSN: 2231-6345 (Online) An Open Access, Online International Journal Available at http://www.cibtech.org/jls.htm 2014 Vol. 4 (2) April-June, pp.89-98/Pashapour et al. Research Article © Copyright 2014 | Centre for Info Bio Technology (CIBTech) 89 A COMPARISON OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE, AND PERFORMANCE OF MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES OF TWO AREAS OF THE MUNICIPALITY AND PRESENTING SOME TECHNIQUES FOR LEARNING UPGRADING (12 AND 13 AREAS OF TEHRAN CITY’S MUNICIPALITY) *Zahra Pas hapour 1 , Lobat Taghavi 1 , Nematallah Jaafarzadeh Haghighi Fard 2 and Naser Moharramne jad 1 1 Department of Environmental Science, Graduate School of Environment and Energy, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran 2 Environmental Technology Research Center and School of Health, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran *Author for Correspondence ABSTRACT The environmental learning is a means for achieving appropriate and positive environmental attitudes. The aim of the environmental learning is having citizens with the environmental literacy who in group or individually tend to take measures to protect and promote balance between human life quality and the environment quality. The emergence of the environmental problems and its cumulative trend is a topic for discussion for most of the economic and social experts. Therefore, this study discusses the environmental behavior of municipal employees of two areas (12, 13) based on their environmental knowledge, attitude and performances. The study is a descriptive and a kind of survey research which uses questionnaires on behavior assessment in order to collect data. The questionnaires were given to 260 municipal employees of zone 12 and to 240 municipal employees of zone 13. The results show that more than half of the municipal employees of the two areas agree or completely agree on appropriate behavior toward the environment. The data also show that the employees’ knowledge about the environment al behaviors was above average. Finally, about half of the employees declared that typically master protection skills of the environment, however comparing to the environmental knowledge, attitude, and performance of the employees of the two municipal areas (12, 13) the outcomes indicated that the employees of both areas have lower knowledge about the environmental attitude and performance. Also, the environmental knowledge, attitude, and performance of area 12 are lower than that of area 13. In other words, the environmental knowledge, attitude, and performance of area 13 are more appreciable. Keywords: Knowledge, Attitude, Performance Environmental, Behavioral Environmental, Municipal Employees INTRODUCTION Nature and the environment is God’s grace which includes all creatures, natural resources, as well as coordinated factors and conditions surrounding each creature on which life is dependent. The environment is a place to live and it provides the most basic human beings’ needs that are of daily growing importance. Unfortunately, during his ruling on this planet, human being have been using natural resources uncontrolledly and without planning, causing air and soil pollutions and destroyed the earth’s biological power (Edhami, 2012). For the first time, since the agriculture era began and man was able to reside at one constant place at twelve thousand years ago, humans’ economic activity on a group scale substituted systems and biophysics process of the world in such a way that have endangered both ecological sustainability and geopolitical security (Ress and Wackemagel, 1996). Industrialization destroys humans’ ecosystem. The world is in the crisis of ecosystem and the environment is threatened by mankind (Stone, 2006). Wrong use of nature and the natural resources has encountered many countries to many problems relating to ecosystem. Current ecosystem crises in addition to population explosion,