UI Zero Plastic as an action towards sustainable campus

Abstract

Plastic waste has become a globalized environmental issue. Indonesia became the second-largest producer of plastic waste after China based on a report from the World Economy Forum. Waste management and individual awareness of environmental issues are challenges for Indonesia. The more individuals who move, the more waste generation will result from these activities. University of Indonesia (UI) as an educational institution has more than 50,000 academic people/year and has diverse activities. UI produced 663,984 kg of plastic waste in 2018. UI was responsible for the production of plastic waste generated as a form of effort towards sustainable universities. Efforts to increase awareness of environmental issues by conducting socialization related to the UI Zero Plastic Program in the campus environment to leaders at UI, students, employees, canteen tenants, and during major events at UI such as UI graduation and the beginning of new student activities. Based on the socialization of the UI Zero Plastic Program that has been implemented, there has been a decrease in the generation of plastic waste from 2018 to 2019. UI Rector’s Decree regarding the UI Zero Plastic Program as a reference in the socialization and implementation of the UI Zero Plastic in the campus environment.

Multi-Sectoral Partnership for Waste Management Evaluation and Awards Recognition in Higher Education

“…It is suggested that there are several areas for improvement such as the waste segregation process to improve the segregation process in the temporary waste area and to include waste evaluation as part of the complete cycle in waste management. The selected university have implementing environmental management system with different and comprehensive approach including UI Green Metric initiative [12,13], UI Zero plastics policy [18] and Safety, Health and Environmental management system [16,17]. Indeed, result from this research suggested that to encourage the implementation of waste management needs a strategy to achieve its environmental management system objectives, including the awards recognition program [9,19].…”

“…It was found during the evaluation process that through the awards recognition program, faculties or schools or programs were more open in discussion, discuss the problems, provide feedback, deliver ideas on how to improve the waste management implementation, and improve institutional performance. Other studies have mention that providing awards for environmental management evaluation will create competitiveness in achieving environmental objectives and performance [2,7,11,15,18,19,22,23]. Indeed, participation of industry and government during the development of waste management evaluation process, increase the understanding, mutual benefit and better waste management implementation.…”