Determining the level of environmental sustainability practices at campus dormitories using green indicators

Abstract

Environmental pollution and degradation at university campuses occurred due to various daily activities by the residents. The provision of support services in the residential and dormitory areas in the form of energy and materials consumption are growing into concerns nowadays. In this study, indicators of environmental sustainability were developed to identify the level of sustainability at dormitory areas. The indicators should be able to convey information easily without losing too much information or creating too much distortion. There are numerous aspects that need to be considered when discussing about environmental sustainability. In order to achieve the appropriate requirement for green dormitories, various references were used based from their practices locally and internationally. The indicators proposed for this study focused on four main environmental sustainable categories which are solid waste management, water resources management, green office practices and education and awareness. Each dormitory was evaluated using the proposed indicator based on the information provided by the dormitory representatives. The score for each indicator was summed up to determine the performance of each dormitory which reflected their sustainability achievement. With the help from the respondents who represented their dormitories, some points that may be the constraints of practicing the sustainability concepts are suggested. Some suggestions were made to improve the dormitories sustainability level. At the end of this study, all dormitories were ranked in the order of their performance based on the total marks obtained from the indicator calculations. From this study, it shows that KIZ scored the highest by 44 marks while KTHO the lowest with 4 marks. As a conclusion, there is a huge difference in sustainability practices between dormitories since there are different management approaches.