Matching Items (366)
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- All Subjects: Sustainability
- Creators: Barrett, The Honors College
Description
This honors thesis proposes a sustainable solution for providing off-grid solar energy to rural communities lacking grid energy infrastructure. The proposed design emphasizes sustainability, low cost, reliability, and ease of maintenance and manufacturing. The report compares pre-built solar systems currently available for purchase with the proposed design. The project includes a user manual draft to ensure long-term sustainability and troubleshooting. Additionally, there is a detailed engineering design for a battery storage solution, electrical component design, and solar panel mounting system. A rural community in northern Arizona serves as an example for the project completed in collaboration with ASU's EPICS program and EWB Chapter. The project is ongoing, with future work to optimize and improve the proposed system design.
ContributorsBeltran Ruelas, Salvador (Author) / Montano Sosa, Jorge (Co-author) / Haq, Emmen (Co-author) / Pham, Brandon (Co-author) / Schoepf, Jared (Thesis director) / Wong, Marnie (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Plastic pollution is undoubtedly one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity today. Significant action is required in order to properly address this rapidly growing threat. The Circular Economy provides a promising model for solution design in terms of responsible consumption and production. Countdown: Circular Economy Solutions is an organization created by Jasmine Amoako-Agyei focused on addressing the threat of plastic pollution in the United States and Ghana, West Africa. The first part of this report will explain the severity of the global plastic pollution crisis and challenges with recycling. It will then present the Circular Economy as a viable model for a course of action. From there it will explain the efforts of Countdown: Circular Economy Solutions over the last two with a pathway forward. This venture leveraged the greater ASU ecosystem of resources such as Walton Sustainability Solutions, Precious Plastic ASU, the Luminosity Lab, Changemaker Central, Venture Devils, Engineering Projects in Community Service (ASU), Gary K. Herberger Young Scholars Academy, KNUST, and Ashesi D: Lab.
ContributorsAmoako-Agyei, Jasmine (Author) / Phelan, Pat (Thesis director) / Cho, Steve (Thesis director) / Loughman, Joshua (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Tech Entrepreneurship & Mgmt (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2022-12
Description
This thesis focuses on the increasing emphasis on sustainability within the fashion industry and how brands, specifically H&M, can increase their market share through updating their in-store retail strategy. Seven common retail strategies are analyzed and recommendations in each area are made to enhance H&M’s emphasis on sustainability. To support these potential recommendations, two focus groups were conducted to evaluate some potential in-store marketing elements. Upon the conclusion of the focus group research, participant’s thoughts were taken into consideration to revise the recommended retail strategies. Overall, by implementing the recommended retail marketing strategies, H&M can incorporate their Conscious line more fully within their stores and promote their new sustainable focus to further their brand in the future.
ContributorsFoley, Jacqueline (Author) / Riker, Elise (Thesis director) / Schlacter, John (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor)
Created2022-12
ContributorsKealoha, Alisia (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis director) / Arcusa, Stéphanie (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2024-05
ContributorsKealoha, Alisia (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis director) / Arcusa, Stéphanie (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
Currently, many countries are working towards transitioning into cleaner energy to meet the Sustainable Development Goals set forth by the United Nations to be met by 2050. Moving to cleaner energy resources, enforcing carbon taxes, and cap and trade programs are all examples of carbon avoidance. Carbon removal is used to describe something that removes the carbon already existing in the atmosphere. While most countries are making decisions that would support carbon avoidance, many scientists claim it will take more than making the transition to clean energy and that something needs to be done about the carbon in the air currently. This project will look towards researching the two methods and working to inform people about carbon removal since many people do not even know what this term means, let alone have heard of it before. To this end, I interviewed one of the lead scientists and engineers on the Mechanical Tree, ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions prototype that will hopefully champion the carbon removal movement. I created podcasts, conducted student surveys, and made an informative video on this subject to raise more awareness of the difference between carbon removal and carbon avoidance. I also researched carbon avoidance to see for myself whether or not carbon removal is necessary. I concluded by the end of this project that carbon removal and carbon avoidance are both necessary components in order to reach net zero by the mid century.
ContributorsKealoha, Alisia (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis director) / Arcusa, Stéphanie (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
All living and man-made features have their place in Earth’s web of living systems. Thinking in terms of design and positioning social, environmental, ecological, and economic systems as interconnected parts of a whole, regenerative design seeks to give back more than it takes from the environment; surpassing present sustainable design initiatives to foster holistic solutions which have the capacity to transform wicked problems into positive outcomes. This method utilizes a systems thinking approach by connecting various scales to the benefit of ecological, environmental, economic, and social organizations. Systems thinking can be defined broadly as “an approach to integration that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system will act differently when isolated from the system’s environment or other parts of the system” (Principal 2021). Thus, systems are nested within one another and cannot be properly examined without considering the other elements they impact. It is then pertinent to work within the interconnectedness of elements and account for these relationships since “the sustainability of a living system is tied directly to its beneficial integration into a larger system” (Regenerative Development and Design: A Framework for Evolving Sustainability 2016). Regenerative design builds upon this by striving to create a unified whole where the co-evolution of humans and natural systems support one another through design (Regenerative Development and Design: A Framework for Evolving Sustainability 2016). Serving as a framework for regenerative design, the Living Building Challenge creates a unified building standard with the goal of enriching architectural and interior environments to positively impact social, environmental, economic, and ecological systems. To implement these principles, the aim of this creative project will be to attain Living Building Challenge Interior CORE certification in the context of a post-pandemic workplace design project.
ContributorsWhalen, Brittany (Author) / Jacobs, Cheri (Thesis director) / Bochart, Sonja (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / The Design School (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
The purpose of this research is to create predictive models for a leading sustainability certification - the B Corporation certification issued by the non-profit company B Lab based on the B Impact Assessment. This certification is one of many that are currently being used to assess sustainability in the corporate world, and this research seeks to understand the relationships between a corporation's characteristics (e.g. market, size, country) and the B Certification. The data used for the analysis comes from a B Lab upload to data.world, providing descriptive information on each company, current certification status, and B Impact Assessment scores. Further data engineering was used to include attributes on publicly traded status and years certified. Comparing Logistic Regression and Random Forest Classification machine learning methods, a predictive model was produced with 87.58% accuracy discerning between certified and de-certified B Corporations.
ContributorsBrandwick, Katelynn (Author) / Samara, Marko (Thesis director) / Tran, Samantha (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
Supply chain sustainability has become an increasingly important topic for corporations
due to consumer demands, regulatory requirements, and employee retention and productivity.
Since more and more stakeholders are beginning to care about sustainability, companies are
looking at how they can reduce their carbon footprint without it leading to higher costs. Although
sustainable supply chain operations are often associated with higher costs, new technology has
surfaced within the last decade that makes this association come into question. This paper serves as an investigation on whether or not implementation of recent technology will not only make for more sustainable supply chains, but also bring cost savings to a company. For the sake of simplicity, this paper analyzes the topic within the context of the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. The three categories of technology that were evaluated are artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and data integration systems. Internship projects and/or published case studies and articles were examined to explore the relationship between the technology, supply chain sustainability, and costs. The findings of this paper indicate that recent technology offers companies innovative sustainability solutions to supply chains without sacrificing cost. This calls for CPG companies to invest in and implement technology that allows for more sustainable supply chains. Shying away from this because of cost concerns is no longer necessary.
ContributorsDixon, Logan (Author) / Printezis, Antonios (Thesis director) / Macias, Jeff (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2024-05
DescriptionCreation of a biodegradable phone case business, "Green Halo Cases".
ContributorsPollard, Oscar (Author) / Rakolta, Mikayla (Co-author) / Curtin, Erika (Co-author) / Byrne, Jared (Thesis director) / Lee, Christopher (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Industrial, Systems & Operations Engineering Prgm (Contributor)
Created2024-05