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The rates of waste generation in India have been increasing with increasing population and urbanization. Since higher education campuses are like mini autonomous cities, they can act as a model for solid waste management (SWM) and enhance sustainable development. SWM is the controlled generation, storage, collection, transport, processing, and disposal of solid waste considering public health, conservation, economics, and environmental conditions. A SWM program on campus will benefit the campus through reduced resource consumption and waste diversion. Developing countries like India are lacking behind in SWM from the developed countries which are using advanced technologies along with efficient management. This paper will analyze the issues related to SWM at IITR (Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee) campus and provide feasible solutions to be implemented at IITR campus for becoming zero waste campus. The SWM at the IITR campus is disorganized and incompetent. Lack of awareness and improper collection, imprecise segregation, exposed transportation, inefficient processing and disorganized disposal of solid waste are the major reasons for it. IITR has the potential to manage its waste properly through various techniques discussed in this paper. These would reduce the amount of waste diverted to landfills and the problems arising on campus due to solid waste, thus leading to a zero waste campus. Other campuses like IITR with similar context and issues can learn from this case study and work towards a zero-waste campus. This paper identifies a need to implement a robust SWM at the IITR campus in India.

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Solid Waste Management (SWM) is a challenging issue to be addressed in most of the urban centres in India. Heavy population densities and exponential growth of the cities’ boundaries, due to migration, create kiosks to the cities’ resources such as land and other amenities. In such cities, the unsegregated waste gets generated in huge quantities while the rest are dumped in landfill sites without any specific treatment. Centralised and holistic approaches are missing, as most of the waste-to-energy & waste treatment plants are either getting closed or not working to its fullest efficiency. The strategies for a decentralised collection system, segregation and treatment of waste are not usually standard practices. In spite of the global impacts being pretty visible due to global warming, a massive amount of plastic gets dumped into ocean, which reaches the human beings via food chain and results in the most number of incurable diseases like cancer. Further, it also results in rapid extinction of the indigenous species. Campuses are known as mini-city or autonomous urban centres for knowledge sharing and the development of innovations. The time is here to make the Indian campuses smatter in collecting and treating the waste on their premises. Hence, the pneumatic collection process of the garbage can play an essential role in making the campus, an advanced and a sustainable one. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop a compact and a decentralised strategy to manage the waste in various urban centres. Also, a formalised informal sector of waste could be contributing to further recycling and processing of the garbage on the campus. The aim of the current research investigation is to identify various possibilities for making the campus, a smart one, in terms of waste management. Furthermore, the study also intends to find out how the compact, decentralised waste collection methods in urban can manage their solid waste in the limited available space. Making zero-waste campuses is a herculean task and a massive challenge must be dealt with immediately to help the cities achieve long-term sustainability.