Using the Zero-Waste Circular Economy Module in Environmental Science and Sustainability

Elizabeth Stoner, Bentley University

Course Description

This course is an introduction to environmental sciences, highlighting current issues in environmental and ecological sustainability. This lab-based course places a strong emphasis on developing critical thinking skills to assess questions such as: how do we decide what to "believe" about environmental issues? How are humans linked to the environment, and can we modify our interactions with the environment? How can we learn from past environmental problems to solve environmental dilemmas of the present and future? How can environmentally sustainable business practices address environmental challenges?

By the end of this course students should:1) Understand the interconnectedness of natural ecosystems and the role of humans in the environment; 2) Through processes of scientific inquiry, explain environmental impacts of human activities and prevent/minimize future problems; 3) Be introduced to different perspectives on environmental policies and problems (e.g., political, economic, and societal) in order to define potential solutions; and arguably most importantly, as an scientifically informed individual, 4) Be able to make responsible decisions about environmental practices in business and society.
We will achieve these course goals through lectures, "virtual field trip" videos, laboratory and field activities, and class discussion.

Explore the Zero-Waste Circular Economy Module »

Relationship of the Zero-Waste Circular Economy Module to Your Course

The course ran in fall 2022, for ~14 weeks. The module was implemented in the later half of the semester, at the end of a multi-week plastics module. The circular economy module spanned over the course of three class periods, building off a an existing module on plastics. Circular economies were discussed repeatedly throughout the course, so that by the time I introduced circular economies to the students, they were fairly familiar with the concepts.

Integrating the Module into Your Course

I taught the BASICS module in my environmental science and sustainability class, which is a class for students that are in science as well as non-majors. One aspect of this course is a plastics module I developed. It's a multi-week module where students get a better understanding of plastics as pollution, sort of the wicked problem of plastics in the environment. So, this module on circular economy actually really tied in nicely to that plastics module. I built it into the middle of the plastics module. I set it up with a background on what plastics are, the production of plastics, what are they made of, how are plastics being introduced into the environment, especially the marine environment, so that students really had a base understanding of it as a contaminant. And then, tying in with the plastics in circular economies and the wicked problem of circular economies, I built out a lecture and an activity where students got an understanding of plastics currently in a linear economy; the take-waste, take-make-waste model that's in place right now with linear economies. Then I tied that in with the common exercise, the students went back and did their own evaluation of the waste that they were accumulating, specifically looking at plastics, but they were exploring all the different waste that they were generating, and they did their own waste audit. Then, we came back into the classroom and we had conversations about, where were their wastes streams coming from? What were some of the primary waste streams that they were generating? A lot of them found that they were producing a lot of plastics as waste. So, that really tied in nicely with conversations we'd been having in class. And then to build out that exercise a little bit further for my core specific exercise, I had the students think a little bit more about waste streams in general, where were their waste streams coming from, from Bentley? So, we really tried to contextualize it at Bentley University. And so, students were given access to a long-term data set on waste, different waste streams coming from the different buildings at Bentley, and then they had to evaluate those waste streams, do some data analysis, and then come up with posters. They made these posters visually depicting where those waste streams were coming from at Bentley, and then they compared that to their personal waste audit. So, blending in the common exercise with building it out to contextualize waste streams at Bentley University.

What Worked Well

What worked well with the exercise is that it blended really nicely into what we were doing in class. There was a really good fit. I think that by integrating the common exercise into material that we were already working on made that transition into the BASICS project that much more seamless. And then, the fact that we were able to integrate the core specific exercise in the common exercise, again, pretty seamlessly, there was a natural transition there. That really worked. So, I think the timing of everything and I think the integration of everything worked very, very well. And I think additionally, students were very intrigued with the concept of circular economies. I think it's something that many of them had heard before or were slightly familiar with it, but building it out, thinking about what it means to actually have a circular economy? Is it possible? Getting into these conversations, they were really interesting, enriching, fascinating conversations the students were really engaged in. I think that it also worked because it was a topic that the students were very invested in.

Challenges and How They Were Addressed

Because I had embedded the BASICS module into the plastics module that I had already developed and implemented in my environmental science class, it was multiple weeks of content and activities related to plastics, circular economies, linear economies. There was a lot of material and a lot of lab activities as well, that they were doing where they were looking at waste streams really closely, doing the waste audit, doing plastics lab, looking at microplastics in fish and water and shellfish. So, there was a lot of stuff there that I think by the end of it, they were a little fatigued by how long the module was. That was really just a function of the fact that I blended in the BASICS module to a preexisting module in my class. I think the other thing that happened in the second iteration of me running the BASICS project, which was so interesting, is that the students by the end of it felt a little bit concerned at the state of where we are in terms of thinking about how to successfully implement circular economies or maybe that it is not something that will happen or could happen. And especially because we talked a lot about plastics in particular and plastics in a circular economy, I think that there was a lot of conversation that came up about, well, you know, are we all kind of just in a bad spot environmentally and can we actually even do anything about plastics and plastic pollution? So, that was for me, as an educator, a little trickier to navigate trying to get students to think about circular economies as this wicked problem and thinking about plastics as a wicked problem, knowing that there's no clearcut solution to any of these issues. Also getting students to still feel like maybe they can effect positive environmental change, they can do something good for the environment, and that was a fine line for me to tour. We had a lot of really productive conversations about that, but I think that was also really tricky to do.

Student Response to the Module and Activities

The students absolutely grasped what we were trying to do by teaching about circular economies and the wicked problem of circular economies, especially when we did the gallery tour when the students really dove into an alternative to plastic. So, for that aspect of the BASICS module, we ended up choosing tote bags, cotton tote bags as the alternative to plastics. And so, the students really got into thinking about, "Okay, well, what are the wicked problems associated with generating these plastic alternatives? You know, what goes into making a cotton tote bag? What's the production process?" And then, putting together posters on that and doing the gallery tour. By the end of that experience, which was the culminating experience for us in the BASICS module, they were just so cued in and fascinated by all of the complex issues that go into thinking about plastics, and plastic alternatives, and circular economies. The conversations that were stimulated from the gallery tour were really cool. I think the overall feedback that I received from students was that the gallery tour and the final experience of tying everything together was really enlightening for them.