Clean Campus Challenge
Overview
In Ireland, rising levels of waste generation, stagnating recycling rates, and continued reliance on exporting waste highlight the urgent need for stronger prevention strategies and sustained behaviour change. Littering remains a visible and preventable aspect of this issue, affecting not only urban environments but also shared spaces such as university campuses. The Green Campus Living Lab can act as testing ground for solutions that influence sustainable behaviours around litter and waste.
TU Dublin Tallaght campus with a population of over 400 staff and more than 5,000 students, represents a dynamic environment where a novel behaviour change intervention can have a positive impact on everyday waste practices.
The Clean Campus Challenge
Developed within the School of Marketing & Entrepreneurship and led by lecturers Hilda Burton and Dr. Patricia Medcalf, the Clean Campus Challenge project is an example of an initiative that can help address behaviours around waste in a university setting.
Focused on raising awareness of littering at TU Dublin Tallaght and empowering students to take action, the project involved a walkthrough audit conducted by students to better understand the issue on campus. The audit was carried out both outside the campus grounds and within key student areas, including classrooms and hallways. Photographs were taken to document conditions at each location, and observations were recorded during the inspection.
The audit demonstrated that exterior litter is not a significant issue, but interior littering, particularly in classrooms, remains an ongoing concern. These findings helped redirect the focus of the project from outdoor areas to interior spaces, where student behaviour has a greater impact.
A follow-up discussion among students identified several key challenges contributing to the problem, including a lack of awareness regarding the value of waste, negative attitudes towards litter, the absence of a dedicated physical space for sharing sustainability-related information, and a lack of appropriate bins for the disposal of vapes and e-cigarettes. These insights informed a number of interventions that were developed and trialled on campus:
1) To address litter hotspots, fifteen awareness signs were co-designed by students and strategically placed to influence behaviour. The locations of the signs were selected in collaboration with John Heaney from TU Dublin Campus and Estates, ensuring the most suitable and feasible placement based on the audit findings
2) Findings from the audit highlighted the absence of appropriate disposal options for e-cigarettes and vapes, prompting collaboration with WEEE Ireland and Campus and Estates. This partnership resulted in the introduction of dedicated disposal bins, making Tallaght the first campus to implement this solution.
3) The initiative reframed waste as a resource through hands-on engagement and creative experimentation. The competition led by and for students, invited participants from across disciplines to transform collected waste from campus into creative objects, fostering circular economy thinking while actively engaging the campus community. The term “Glitter My Litter” was used metaphorically to encourage participants to reimagine and add value to discarded materials through creative reuse.
4) Further embedding the campus as an open, interactive learning space, the project included the development and trialling of a display cabinet located in one of the campus gardens in collaboration with Gerry Ryder, Lecturer, School of Mechanical Engineering and Linda Bennet, Senior Library Assistant. This display cabinet enables students and staff to share information and initiatives about responsible consumption and other sustainability topics in a visible and accessible way, to support ongoing knowledge exchange.
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Evaluation and Reflection
Over 20 students who attended the Glitter My Litter event gained a deeper understanding of the circular economy and upcycling through engaging, hands-on activities, empowering them to apply these concepts both within the university and in their everyday lives.
The display cabinet is being actively used by students to share ongoing information and raise awareness about circular consumption and biodiversity. In addition, the WEEE bins are in use, and there are plans to install more anti-littering signage across campus.
These initiatives represent simple, practical, and replicable approaches to raising awareness of, and addressing, litter and waste management issues across TU Dublin campuses.
Living Lab approach and alignment with SATLE objectives
The Clean Campus Challenge exemplifies the Living Lab approach by positioning the campus as a real-world environment where students identify and explore sustainability challenges, develop solutions, test them in the real world, and generate actionable insights through co-creation and experiential learning.
The project embeds sustainability into teaching and learning while generating actionable insights that can inform future innovation, demonstrating alignment the HEA’s Strategic Alignment of Teaching and Learning Enhancement (SATLE) objectives.
The process developed can be replicated to other TU Dublin campus locations, and to other university campuses, as a scalable campus-based, sustainability solution with strong educational value.
In Semester 1 of the 2026-2027 academic year this Green Campus Solution will be considered by the Green Campus Committee for further iteration, replication or scaling up, and for publication in the TU Dublin Green Campus Living Lab community on Zenodo
SDG and Green-Campus alignment
This project addresses SDG 12: Responsible Consumption & Production and contributes to SDG 3: Good Health & Wellbeing and SDG 11: Sustainable Cities & Communities
Aligned with the Green-Campus theme of Litter & Waste, the Clean Campus Challenge demonstrates how environmental action can be embedded in education.
TU Dublin’s Green Campus Living Lab is supported through the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) strand of the HEA’s Strategic Alignment in Teaching and Learning Enhancement (SATLE) initiative.