I've frequently mentioned the ASM Materials Camps for teachers (returning in-person for summer 2022, hopefully near you). In pre-pandemic times I taught a few of them in person each summer. Over the past couple of years I've taught a couple of them virtually each summer.
But not only am I a camp leader, I'm also a camp taker. I took the first and second year camps a decade or so ago, and I've taken a couple of their specialty camps in the summer since. I took a corrosion camp at the University of Akron and - last summer - a camp on sustainable materials online.
One of the major focuses of the sustainability camp was the concept of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This process looks at a product's impact on the environment from source (mining, drilling, growing, whatever) to disposal (reuse, recycling, or simply landfilling). The process can become incredibly detailed - to a level well beyond the day or two we spent discussing the LCA in our camp - but can also be done at an introductory level for middle or high school materials students.
If you want to take a look at some very in-depth LCAs, here are some links to documents comparing various grocery bags (the cliched 'paper or plastic?' debate).
- Clemson University, "Life Cycle Assessment of Grocery Bags in Common Use in the United States" (194 pages)
- Californians Against Waste, "A Brief Analysis of Life Cycle Analyses (LCAs) and the Impacts of Plastic Vs. Paper Bags" (4 page)
- Life Cycle Initiative, "Single-use plastic bags and their alternatives" (76 pages)
- National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, "Review of Life Cycle Assessments Comparing Paper and Plastic Products" (43 pages)
And I'll post some more LCA basic videos after the jump.
