Are Clean Tech Startups Sustainable and/or Circular?

The students expand on the skills learned in the common exercise to products or services that may be more directly related to the topic of the course, in this case, clean tech startups. It could also be applied to something like wind turbine blades in a course on wind energy, for example. The students must evaluate claims made by the companies, compare them with available data sources, and gauge the sustainability and circularity of the company's offerings based on appropriate criteria. The assignment requires them to outline their findings and conclusions through a guided process (used in most team assignments throughout the course).

This activity is a follow-on to the Wicked Problem of an Equitable​ Zero-Waste Circular Economy​ module.

Students learned about process mapping, equity, and lifecycle analysis through the common module exercise. This exercise is designed to be an application and evaluation of the knowledge and skills they have learned through the common module. With that background, the activity could be completed individually or as group either in class outside of class time. A group enables more perspectives to think through the different facets of the lifecycle. Done as an in class activity enables more instructor support to the students as they work. In some instances there were technical terms or details about the processes and products where assistance was warranted. This could be adapted to a range of educational levels and expertise.

Students chose from a list of clean tech startup companies supplied by the instructor. They researched the company in advance of class to facilitate the process mapping component. The assignment asked for the process map as part of their submission along with a series of structured questions for outlining and justifying their determination of whether the company contributes to a sustainable, equitable, circular economy. They outline the criteria they use to reach their conclusion, how they will measure their criteria and then finally how their assessment of the company on those criteria relate to their conclusion.

The assignment is designed to fit with Team-Based Learning theory where the end goal of a team assignment is a discrete choice or conclusion that the students should reach and agree on. In addition, the assignment is rooted in multicriteria decision theory in the sense that outline criteria for their choice and their justification.

As mentioned above, the students must outline the logic of their conclusions through criteria, justifying their use of the criteria, and connecting that to their final conclusion about whether the company is sustainable and/or circular. Their criteria should be reasonably comprehensive and guided by the module content. Additionally, they are asked to evaluate the limitations of what they have come up with, which should show an understanding of what else might be important, but not included in their analysis for various reasons.