Using counterintuitive sustainability examples in teaching life cycle assessment: A case study

Popular media has reinforced ideas of what products are or are not environmentally detrimental, often only considering a fraction of the overall product life cycle, such as the end of life for single use products, or a single environmental consideration. This leads to counterintuitive sustainability examples, where a product is commonly thought to be much more environmentally impactful than its counterparts, but that actually is not universally true. Single use plastic drinking straws are one such example, which were used as the course project in a project based life cycle assessment (LCA) course. Students’ perceptions of which straws were the best and worst for the environment were surveyed both before and after the course, in order to see first the effect of the popular media on the initial ranking and second how the ranking changed after completion of the course project. Reflections on the course experience were also utilized to gauge how the students’ understanding of both LCA and sustainability changed as a result of the course. In general, students’ understanding of which straw option had the greatest and least environmental impact changed as a result of the course, in particular enabling a more nuanced view of environmental impact. The guided student reflections indicated four major areas of focus regarding the relationship between sustainability and LCA: LCA as revealing truth, LCA for decision making, single use products are not always the most environmentally impactful, and using LCA to change their concept of what is sustainable.