Sustainable higher education institutions: The case of Karadeniz Technical University

Universities in higher education institutions nowadays have the feature of being a city in terms of the area they cover and the population they address. Higher education institutions, which have their own administrative system in order to better carry out various services in the areas they cover, like other urban settlements, can have various effects on the environment as a result of the education, training and research services they prosecute. The effect of environmental issues is felt in a concrete way in today's world in this situation it should be noted that the negative effects of higher education institutions on the environment should be reduced and progress should be made towards becoming a sustainable community. From this point of view, and especially since the 1990s, it has seen that some higher education institutions try to reduce the negative effects on the environment. Higher education institutions, which try to reduce negative impacts on the environment and build a more sustainable future, have established various collaborations to confirm their sustainability among themselves. Sustainable higher education institutions provide their sustainability or become more sustainable through environmental practices in various areas of action such as waste management, environmental awareness, energy management, environmental and institutional governance and so on. At this point the aim of this study is to examine the applications of sustainable higher education institutions in sustainable higher education cooperations in terms of solid waste management, environmental awareness and energy management to compare with Karadeniz Technical University and try to determine what applications Karadeniz Technical University should make towards to being a sustainable higher education institution. Various quantitative data were obtained with using separate methods for each of the three variables involved in the study compared to the data of sustainable higher education institutions and various proposals have been made for Karadeniz Technical University. Keywords: Sustainable Higher Education Institutions, Karadeniz Technical University, Waste Management, Environmental Awareness, Energy Management