A Sustainable Platform for Buying and Selling Pre-owned Goods Among College Students: Campus Bazaar

Abstract

The Campus Bazaar project addresses waste generation, financial burdens, and logistical inefficiencies faced by college students in managing essential items like books, electronics, furniture, and cooking utensils. Each year, students purchase new goods, often discarding them due to transportation or storage challenges, leading to financial losses and environmental pollution from non-biodegradable waste. Campus Bazaar introduces a platform for students to buy and sell pre-owned items within their campus, promoting sustainability, affordability, and convenience. The platform features a user-friendly interface, college email verification, a chat system, and a rating mechanism to ensure security and trust. An environmental impact tracker highlights waste reduction and carbon savings, encouraging sustainable habits. Developed using Next.js, Supabase, and Google Cloud, the platform followed an agile methodology, with pilot testing showing reduced waste, cost savings, and high user satisfaction. Campus Bazaar fosters a circular economy while building community through resource-sharing. Future plans include multi-campus expansion, auction features, and environmental partnerships. This student-centric solution aligns with global sustainability goals and shows potential for widespread academic adoption.

Introduction

Campus Bazaar is an innovative online marketplace designed specifically for college students to buy and sell essential pre-owned items like books, electronics, furniture, and cooking utensils. The platform addresses a common problem: students frequently buy new items each academic year but often discard or abandon them due to difficulties in transportation and storage, resulting in financial strain and environmental waste.

By creating a trusted, campus-specific marketplace verified through college email, Campus Bazaar reduces these issues by facilitating convenient peer-to-peer exchanges within the student community. Features like chat, seller ratings, item wishlists, and an environmental impact tracker promote trust, ease of use, and sustainability.

The project draws on research highlighting the importance of circular economy principles, sustainable waste management, and digital platforms in universities but fills a gap by focusing on student-centric logistics and campus-specific needs. A survey of nearly 800 students informed the platform’s design, emphasizing features that address trust, accessibility, and environmental awareness.

The methodology follows a user-centered, agile development process, with key modules including user authentication, item listing, transactions with pickup options, communication, ratings, environmental impact tracking, and wishlist functionality. Campus Bazaar not only lowers costs and environmental impact but also fosters a sustainable, resource-sharing culture on campus, with potential global applicability.

Conclusion

The Campus Bazaar project presents an innovative, student-centric solution to the challenges of waste generation, financial burden, and logistical inefficiencies faced by college students. By enabling the buying and selling of pre-owned goods within campus communities, the platform promotes sustainability, affordability, and convenience. The integration of secure authentication, a user-friendly interface, and an environmental impact tracker aligns the project with global sustainability goals and circular economy principles. Preliminary survey insights and initial development outcomes validate the platform’s relevance and potential. Future pilot testing and the planned expansion of modules will further refine and strengthen Campus Bazaar, positioning it as a scalable model for sustainable resource sharing across academic institutions.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2025 Dr. Manish Madhava Tripathi, Insha Khan, Md Nehal Akhlaque . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.