Sustainable Campus Initiatives through Integrated Solid Waste Management in METU Campus, Turkey

2017-10-08
Bahçelioğlu, Ecem
Buğdayci, Selin
Doğan, Nazlı Barçın
Şimşek, Naz
Kaya, Sinan
Alp, Emre
Middle East Technical University (METU) is an international research university with about 27000 students. The METU campus area is 4500 hectares including residential areas which have a capacity of 7000 students, shopping center, banks, food courts, indoor sports facilities, tennis courts, football fields, swimming pools, dormitories, cafeterias, a technopolis (an organized research and business center), forest, a shallow lake, and department buildings. Because of its large population and variety of activities taking place in the campus, significant amount solid waste generation with different types become inevitable, which causes a need for Integrated Solid Waste Management (ISWM) plan. A comprehensive project funded by METU was initiated in 2014 to support METU's initiatives to develop sustainable campus strategies. Being a part of this comprehensive project, in this study, the focus is to develop ISWM for METU campus. In order to create a ISWM plan, the following steps are followed and suggestions are made to support ISWM plan: (I) Assessment of solid waste generation rates in the campus (II) Determination of compost potential in the campus (III) Assessment of the current solid waste management strategies (collection, separation, processing, storage, transfer/transport, disposal) for different types of waste (organic, hazardous, medical, recyclable, and scrap wastes) and (IV) Determination of attitudes and awareness of solid waste management in Campus through a survey. The results show that the average daily solid waste generation factor is 0.29 kg/day/cap/ and the total amount of waste generated varies between 5.8-10.3 tons/day on a weekly basis in the campus. In addition, it was found that total collected recyclable waste accounts for 13% of the total waste generated at most. For organic waste fraction, experiments indicate that composting is an effective method to reduce organic waste. The complete evaluation resulted in development of strategies (behavioral, structural and managerial) to decrease the solid waste generation rate, increase the recyclable material collection rate and initiate compost activities. In addition, these strategies aim to decrease the human health and environmental risks associated with exposure to all kind of solid waste.
The 12th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems

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Citation Formats
E. Bahçelioğlu, S. Buğdayci, N. B. Doğan, N. Şimşek, S. Kaya, and E. Alp, “Sustainable Campus Initiatives through Integrated Solid Waste Management in METU Campus, Turkey,” presented at the The 12th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems, 2017, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/85712.