Module 9: Circular economy
Through this module we encouraged students to try finding a way to be an active part of circular economy. While following the path of CE we called students to identify an everyday product that is made our of plastics or plastics-based firbres such as polyester. Something include a cup, a bottle, a shirt, your trainers, a toothbrush, or a carpet in your flat.
They had to:
-Think of the precise context it falls into.
- Think of how it is made. It might be made of plastics and molded or extruded. It might be made of fibres and knetted/woven or nonwoven.
-Think of its packaging.
Mission
Realize how we could:
- desing out waste and pollution
- keep products and materials in use
- regenerate natural systems
Introduction
We welcomed students with an introduction animated video published in YouTube by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
The video is entitled "Explaining the Circular Economy and How Society Can Re-think Progress" and could be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCRKvDyyHmI
Then some first information was given, as follows:
A circular economy is "a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible".
A CE aims to tackle global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution by emphasizing design based implementation of the three base principles of the model.
The three principles required for the transformation to a circular economy are: eliminating waste and pollution, circulating products and materials, and the regeneration of nature.
We explained to students that CE is defined in contradistinction to the traditional linear economy.
Then we mentioned that the issue around our circular economy are something we can touch every day because all of us are a part of this economy.
Last but not least, we told them that unfortunately, we must think about our world wide and regional situation and everyone of us should find different solutions.
Learning journey: Circular design
We called students to open the Learing journey and create their own renewable product alone or in a team, and then to upload it to a padlet.
Learning Journey: https://www.slideshare.net/CircularEconomyAsia/learning-journey-circular-design
Then students were asked to download a worksheet in pdf related to Circular economy business, edited by Zero Waste Scotland’s Circular Economy Accelerator. There were described the first steps that someone could follow on a journey towards circular thinking. They worked in teams (3-4 students) thinking about what they could improve at their school by making use of circular economy principles. At the end they uploaded their results at a padlet.
worksheet source:
https://ceaccelerator.zerowastescotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ZWS-CE-Worksheets-stg-1-1.pdf