The Carbon Footprint Life Behaviour of Students’ in Universities in the New Era: A Case Study of Hangzhou Medical College

Abstract

The development of an ecological civilisation is a key component of China’s ‘five-in-one’ strategic approach and is essential to its creation of a human destiny community. Based on the abundance of China’s energy resources and its planned step-by-step implementation of carbon reduction efforts, its 20th Party Congress proposed the country’s pursuit of carbon peak and carbon neutrality. Chinese college students have a crucial duty to help realise this ‘dual-carbon’ mission as participants and proponents of this new journey. This study collected data from students at Hangzhou Medical College to examine the elements that determine college students’ individual and collective carbon footprints, using comparative, descriptive and structural analyses. The study demonstrated the variety in the spatial distribution of carbon footprints across many campuses, the lack of motivation to live a low-carbon lifestyle. To construct an environmentally-friendly and low carbon campus, we propose four recommendations to decrease the individual carbon footprints of students on campus. To establish the groundwork for the future execution of the ‘dual-carbon’ strategic aim of China, this research encourages college students to start from small parts of their daily life, establish the idea of low-carbon life and actively participate in the construction of low-carbon life.