Meets the following requirements: HS   

Which products have the lesser environmental impact, paper or plastic grocery bags? Cloth versus disposable diapers? The answers (and there are many) are surprising. This interdisciplinary course serves to move students away from only studying environmental issues and toward having skills to assess the environmental impact of the consumer choices they have. It does this by introducing approaches and methodologies for evaluating the impact and use of technology and materials. The focus of analysis will be on technology that leads to radical reductions in energy use, material throughput, and waste. The course takes a comprehensive approach to technology, in that technology must be evaluated in terms of both its net benefits (costs and benefits "from cradle to grave" to the user and the community) and in terms of how it integrates with and affects human communities and the environment; understanding these two forms of evaluation constitute the two primary goals of the course. After an introduction to green technology, students are introduced to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a means of evaluating both financial and environmental costs and benefits. LCA can be applied to a wide range of industrial processes, building materials and energy options, consumer products and services, and regional infrastructure systems. We will use available computer software to apply LCA. In addition to assessing the environmental impact of various technologies and materials, studying LCA will give the student an appreciation for engineering processes in general, and industrial ecology in particular. Other cost-benefit methodologies, such as employment-based analysis (EBA) will also be introduced.  A variety of readings, including case studies and qualitative methodologies, will be used to study how technology interfaces with individuals, organizations, communities, and the natural environment. 

Level:  Intermediate. *HS*.