The carbon footprint of a public sector University before and during the COVID-19 lockdown

Carbon footprint (CF) is a measure of greenhouse gas emissions generated from daily human-induced activities as carbon dioxide equivalent. This study is an attempt to represent a consumption-based CF study from the scope of transportation, electricity, and waste generation for University of the Punjab (PU), Lahore under the WRI/WBCSD greenhouse gas protocol corporate standards. Data acquired through fieldwork, questionnaire surveys, direct sampling, and existing records for the year 2019-20 suggested that electricity is the greatest contributor of CO2 emissions at 59%, followed by transportation at 36%, and waste generation at approximately 5%. The total CF(CO2_eq) generated from different sources is about 18360.62MT for one year. The recent COVID-19 lockdown has offered inimitable prospect to compare the carbon footprint of one of the largest higher education institutes of Pakistan before and during this pandemic. The data can serve for tracking, assessing, and setting goals for greenhouse gas emission reduction programs in future. © 2022 Global NEST.

An analysis on the effect of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic movement control order (MCOS) on the solid waste generation in Peninsular Malaysia.

This study intends to deal with the environmental consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia, by providing a summary of the effects of COVID-19 on municipal solid waste (MSW). In this analysis, the data on domestic waste collection were collected from the Solid Waste Management and Public Cleaning Corporation (SWCorp) from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020 to evaluate the relative changes in MSW percentage via a waste weighing method. The data consisted of the cumulative tonnage of MSW for every local authority in Peninsular Malaysia and was classified according to MCO phases; before the MCO, during the MCO, during the conditional MCO (CMCO) and during the recovery MCO (RMCO) phases. The results indicated that the enforcement of the early MCO showed a positive effect by decreasing the volume of MSW. This decrease was noted across 41 local authorities, which accounts for 87.23% of Peninsular Malaysia. However, the amount of MSW began to increase again when the MCO reached the conditional and recovery stages. From this, it can be concluded that the implementation of the MCO, in its various incarnations, has shown us that our lifestyles can have a harmful impact on our environment. While the pandemic was still spreading and limitations were still in place in Malaysia, local governments and waste management companies had to quickly alter their waste management systems and procedures. The current circumstance allows us to rethink our social and economic structures while improving environmental and social inclusion.