Currently, Botswana is dealing with a great deal of water scarcity and the city of Gaborone has found itself with a very limited water supply. Currently, the water supply deficit is met by long-distance water transfers through two connected pipelines known as the North-South Water Carrier spanning over 400 km. To alleviate demand on potable water, wastewater is treated, and the effluent is used in areas that would have typically used potable water such as landscaping including the watering of gardens and golf courses.  Wastewater effluent is also used to irrigate various horticulture crops.  This is contributing to food security and nutritional health.  

Along with wastewater treatment, solid waste collection is challenging in Gaborone due to the shortage of collection vehicles and the landfill being about 40 kilometers outside of the city. These circumstances limit waste trucks to only one to two waste collection trips per day. This leads to infrequent waste collection resulting in some citizens illegally dumping waste in and around the city. Poor or lack of separation of waste leads to an increased risk of fire at the landfill due to inflammables present in waste. Additionally, leachate from the landfill sometimes spills or overflows from the leachate pond/dam. This is problematic because the landfill is situated near a stream that leads into the village Gamodubu.

Recently, a fire broke out at the landfill causing it to be closed for about 4 weeks. The cause of the fire has not been established although it is suspected that some inflammable waste was dumped at the landfill. To avoid these dangerous situations, the public must be educated on how to separate waste properly before its collection.

To overcome these difficulties, the city is planning to promote sustainability by endorsing the three R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle. This will encourage economic empowerment and better waste management. The City Council is also hoping to collect biogas by promoting sludge digestion within waste management facilities. Sludge digestion is a biological process that decomposes organic solids into stable substances. The biogas produced from this process can be recovered and reused to produce electricity and heating leading to affordable clean energy.

Further, there are six undergraduate students specifically investigating issues of concerns at multiple different landfills. These projects include researching leachate contamination on herbaceous and woody plants, assessing the presence of heavy metals in groundwater at the Gamodubu Landfill, and the presence of macroinvertebrates in the leachate dam at the Gamodubu Landfill. Additionally, students are studying the contamination by Gamodubu Regional Landfill leachate on soil fauna and the diversity of birds at Gamodubu Regional Landfill. There is also a postgraduate student who is working on microscopic and molecular identification of gastrointestinal parasites in wastewater.

By focusing on the designated project areas wastewater treatment and solid waste management, the City Council of Gaborone Botswana will take advantage of the �鶹��Ƶ model and use resources provided by the University of Botswana to create cleaner water and a cleaner more sustainable city. The �鶹��Ƶ Consultancy funds will be used to fund both areas of the project and will enhance the quality of education for students and, ideally, generate jobs for low-income individuals.

This project is currently in progress.

The Passive Open Space Program is part of the City of Tacoma’s
Environmental Services Department’s Surface Water Program. The
program, which is responsible for maintaining 488 acres of wetlands,
forests, and other critical environmental areas in Tacoma, engages
volunteer community members who serve as Habitat Stewards and help
the City maintain these open spaces and ecologically critical areas.
The goal of this project was to better understand how the City of Tacoma
could increase awareness of, and participation in, the Passive Open Space Program, with a particular focus on the inclusion of historically underrepresented communities. Student researchers reached out to 20 community organizations and to more than 40 representatives of extracurricular programs at schools to set up focus groups. Of their initial outreach attempts, students successfully conducted two survey collection and activity sessions with middle school groups and outreach at one community center.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

Sustainable City Years Program Contact Info

University Faculty Contact
Tori Derr
Natural Sciences
Assistant Professor
vderr@csumb.edu

Local Government / Community Contact
Gloria Stearns
Economic Development
Economic Development Program Manager
gstearns@ci.seaside.ca.us
831-899-6830

Universidad Veracruzana (UV) is a public university that commits to directing its substantial knowledge base towards the solutions of society’s needs.

Since its creation, UV has engaged with communities, governments, civil NGOs, and the productive sector to contribute to the welfare of people. Through its Sustainability Master Plan 2023, the university promises that: 1) Its student community of all academic fields relate their acquired knowledge to the social reality of their surroundings. 2) Its alums have the necessary competencies to practice consistent with the principles of sustainability. 3) It keeps a formal relationship with other organizations and institutions for joint action towards sustainability based on transdisciplinary, participatory action research and social impact. 4) Its community supports indigenous, rural, and suburban communities in their biocultural development, always with the recognition of their local knowledge and capabilities. The �鶹��Ƶ program at the Universidad Veracruzana adopts the �鶹��Ƶ Model as a strategy that integrates its teaching and outreach roles. Its purpose is to connect its students with the community to increase the social relevance of education and contribute to society and sustainability.

The focus of our program are the collaborative partnerships between the university and other societal groups, understood as interactions agreed upon by all parts with shared objectives, and which harness differences as complementary strengths for the search for solutions with more impact potential than individual actions. The collaborative approach to university outreach entails 1) acknowledging diversity, complementarity, and legitimacy of knowledge systems, capabilities, and interests in groups and sectors of society 2) the dialogue with communities, recognized as actors with intellectual property, in the scoping of their development objectives, and with agency to achieve those objectives 3) the joint definition of problems to be addressed, the actions to develop, and the scope of the collaborative relationship 4) the coordinated development of actions, to which each part contributes according to its capabilities 5) the joint evaluation of the partnership outcomes, ensuring their academic, social relevance, and usefulness. UV will adopt the �鶹��Ƶ Model via the Coordination for Sustainability, with the support of strategic allies inside and outside the university.

The program’s mission is to foster collaboration, mutual support, and social learning between our university community and different social partners to create sustainability solutions for local and regional social-environmental needs.

Fun Facts about the Universidad Veracruzana

Public or Private Institution | Public
Number of students at institution | 87,034

Year Program Established | 2023
Country | Mexico

Past City Partners

Universidad Veracruzana has a long history of partnerships with communities and governments. Since 1996 it has partnered with 11 local and indigenous communities to establish outreach facilities (“casas UV”) in their territories to enable students and teachers to engage with the communities and exchange knowledge. The university has also created links with local NGOs to jointly act in the development of strategies for an integrated collaborative management of watersheds in the region. Partnerships with international organizations to drive local solutions to sustainability have also occurred, such as with the City Adapt project of the United Nations Environmental Program, and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network in Mexico.

Contact Info

José Antonio Pensado Fernández
Coordinador de Programa �鶹��Ƶ
+52 1 (228) 186-1903
apensado@uv.mx

Laura Odila Bello Benavides
Coordinadora Universitaria para la Sustentabilidad
+52 1 (228) 812-4626
labello@uv.mx

Coordinación Universitaria para la Sustentabilidad
+52 1 (228) 812-4626
cosustenta@uv.mx

Website |

The Sustainable Cities (SC) Program intends to leverage the resources of Indiana State University towards creating more sustainable cities while providing unique experiential learning opportunities to ISU students.

The Sustainable Cities Program at Indiana State University was born from the partnership between the Office of Sustainability and Center for Community Engagement. Indiana State University is consistently highlighted for its community engagement, service learning, and experiential learning. In fact, Washington Monthly’s National University Rankings placed ISU first in the State of Indiana and top 9% of public schools overall for community service. The mission to increase engagement in sustainability initiatives across the university and in the community was a major priority. This led to the creation of the Sustainable Cities Program as a unique partnership within the Division of University Engagement. The SC Program has leadership through multiple staff in the division and faculty leaders at the university. The main point of contact is the Sustainability Coordinator for the Office of Sustainability. The current focus of the program is to increase engagement with Wabash Valley communities and assist in building their resilience and sustainability efforts.

Fun Facts about The Sustainable Cities Program

The SC Program has a broad range of partners across the institution such as 10+ academic departments, the Division of University Engagement, the Cunningham Memorial Library, and multiple interested student organizations.

Public or Private Institution | Public
Total Student Enrollment | 9,459
Year Program Established | 2020
Country | US

City Partners

The Sustainable Cities Program launched in 2020 with its inaugural partner city, The City of Sullivan. After the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the first year of the program, this partnership was extended one more year.

Contact Details

Carrie Lutz
Business Engagement Director
carrie.lutz@indstate.edu

The city wants to envision remedies to these challenges and answer questions such, would its citizens prefer a more cohesive and explicit solid waste strategy? Answering these questions would allow the city to shape a future solid waste management plan which more efficiently serves its population and reduces environmental impacts. 

Apache Junction partnered with Project Cities to dive into this issue. A member of the �鶹��Ƶ, Arizona State University’s (ASU) Project Cities “connects higher education with local communities” () to co-create sustainable solutions which progress cities toward a better future. Apache Junction invited students in ASU’s Environmental Resource Management program to evaluate and compare Apache Junction’s waste management practices and those of surrounding cities.

The students involved conducted research and generated insightful recommendations for the city of Apache Junction. Various forms of research were implemented by students, including the following examples: 

• Comparing the practices of Apache Junction to nearby cities thanks to literature research. 
• Conducting a human-centered, qualitative survey to reveal “trends in solid waste practices of Apache Junction residents and their perceptions of different solid waste strategies.” ()
• Researching relevant case studies to create benchmarks for the City’s waste management services.

Through these and other methods, students defined Apache Junction’s existing practices and strategies, from which more sustainable solid waste management strategies could be recommended.

Insight gathered by students generated numerous recommendations that the City of Apache Junction could implement to improve the sustainability of their Solid Waste Management strategy. Some of these findings included the following: 

• Discontinue “Free Dump Week,” as surveyed residents do not primarily rely on it and are “not opposed to weekly pickup of solid waste and recycling”; furthermore, this should be considered as the program might be in violation of city and county codes related to hauling solid waste. ()
• Join a neighboring city in contracting a shared-service solid waste provider.
• Implement a pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) solid waste service to allow residents to remove waste as needed.
• Strengthen recycling options—such as a mandated recycling pickup—to extend the lifetime of the Apache Junction Landfill.

The partnered ASU course and its students helped Apache Junction discover strategic implementations that could strengthen the sustainability of the City’s solid waste management system. Through these ASU recommendations, Apache Junction can effectively perform internal cost-benefit and residential analyses to confidently identify the best course of action going forward, ensuring their citizens are both protected and served well into the future.

Arizona State University Project Cities Contact
Steven Russell
Program Manager
steven.russell@asu.edu
480-727-2698

Al Brown
Senior Lecturer
The Polytechnic School ERM Program
al.brown@asu.edu
(480) 727-1320

City of Apache Junction Contact
Larry Kirch
Director
Development Services
City of Apache Junction
lkirch@ajcity.net
480-474-5082

Mike Wever
Director
Public Works
City of Apache Junction
mwever@ajcity.net
(480) 474-8513

Read the full story of the partnership.