Abstract
Latin America has megacities and therefore its higher education institutions are challenged to teach and research about sustainable development in very unsustainable contexts such as solid waste management problems. One of the aspects of sustainable development in university campuses is the sustainability in campus operations. Regarding this issue, solid waste management programs (SWMPs) are useful tools that show immediate effects. This chapter presents both a comparative analysis of the environmental performance of Latin American campuses and the monitoring of a particular SWMP by applying case study methodology. This SWMP was implemented at the campus of the Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2013, and monitored for three years. Results showed lack of community participation. This encouraged us to research new strategies and compare this SWMP with other cases in Latin America by using an environmental performance indicator for each university studied. Results showed that the program should be institutionalized, since this would enable the allowance of human and financial resources. Results also showed that communication plans are also relevant tools to improve users’ participation. Although these factors were recognized as necessary, they did not guarantee SWMP success because of the poorly structured facilities, limited financial resources and barriers that had to be overcome at individual level.
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Acknowledgements
The authors want to express their special thanks to the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET) of Argentina for the financial support of grants.
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Galván, S.L., Faitani, N.G., Sosa, L.V., Lopez de Munain, D.N., Bielsa, R.O. (2020). Comparative Analysis of the Environmental Performance of Latin American University Campuses: Methodological Approaches. In: Leal Filho, W., et al. Universities as Living Labs for Sustainable Development. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15604-6_43
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