The university activity in the fields of teaching, research and administration, and in university life in general, generates a large, diverse amount of waste ranging from urban solids, mainly paper, cardboard and containers, to dangerous or specialised waste, derived largely from laboratory activities.

Hence, the University as an institution that produces a large amount of waste must assume the environmental responsibility of managing this waste under the sustainability and self-sufficiency criteria of reducing production, reusing and recycling what is produced, and ultimately ensuring the correct processing of what is left.

Hierarchically prior to reuse and recycling, a new R needs to be added, that of rethinking whether a product's acquisition is really necessary, so, efforts have to be aimed at waste prevention.

Strategies for waste prevention