Entrepreneurial recycling initiatives towards campus sustainability

Recycling entrepreneurrial initiatives can lead to campus sustainability and at the same time generates lucrative income amongst staff of higher learning institutes. The Higher Education Institute Entrepreneurship Development Policy aims to encourage and strengthen the development of entrepreneurship to be more organized and holistic among the local universities in Malaysia in producing high-quality human capital, with creative thinking, attributes, and values. Recycling is a practice to maintain campus sustainability and to generate income among the campus community. This study aims i) to increase knowledge and awareness of the campus community towards entrepreneurial initiatives in recycling, ii) to promote sustainable entrepreneurial initiatives among the campus community, and iii) to review the success factors and challenges faced by the recycling entrepreneurs at the university level. Questionnaires, interviews, and observation were used to gather data in this research. The findings indicate that organizing programmes that educate the campus community can open up the minds of the students and staff to the potential of recycling initiatives, increase their knowledge and awareness, and encourage innovation and creative thinking in the use of recycled materials. By applying the values of entrepreneurship, the staffs and students can generate income, and improve the preservation and beautification of the campus. However, challenges faced by the recycling entrepreneurs are: stealing of recycling items, recycling is considered as a non-glamorous job, lack of materials because the community is not practicing separation of garbage, lack of capital to expand and purchase the equipment due to lack of support from financial institutions