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- All Subjects: Sustainability
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ContributorsJordan, Brendan (Author) / Boyer, Mackenzie (Thesis director) / Bronowitz, Jason (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainable Engineering & Built Envirnmt (Contributor)
Created2023-12
ContributorsJordan, Brendan (Author) / Boyer, Mackenzie (Thesis director) / Bronowitz, Jason (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainable Engineering & Built Envirnmt (Contributor)
Created2023-12
Description
The post-industrial era ushered in significant advancements in global living standards, largely driven by technological innovations. The events of the 20th century shaped how these innovations implemented themselves into American culture, particularly influencing consumption habits. The broad shift to reliance on single use materials led to concerns about resource exploitation and environmental sustainability. Recycling stands as a vital tool in mitigating these concerns, while maximizing sustainable goals and circular material life cycles. While recycling stands as an important concept in material reuse, the United States recycling infrastructure faces some major inefficiencies that prevent it from achieving its optimal benefits. Investigating the growth of curbside recycling and the consequences of China’s ban on recycling materials reveal failures within the recycling system. Once identified, further analysis of recycling failures emphasizes the use of concepts such as industrial ecology to visualize how industrial materials are influenced by broader multi-dimensional systems. One such level of analysis involves investigating the shortcomings of current recycling technologies and their implementation. However, to provide a fuller explanation of these inefficiencies, analysis of cultural, economic, and political dimensions is necessary. Case studies of recycling systems in different types of U.S. cities such as San Francisco and Surprise, provide insights into the effectiveness of these dimensions at highlighting core failures. Analysis of these failures also provides a framework in which to engineer possible solutions for recycling systems that emphasis the growth of cohesive recycling infrastructure and leveraging legislation to influence the recycling rates and the production of more renewable materials.
ContributorsJordan, Brendan (Author) / Boyer, Mackenzie (Thesis director) / Bronowitz, Jason (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainable Engineering & Built Envirnmt (Contributor)
Created2023-12
Description
Phoenix, Arizona is a city characterized by intense urban sprawl: low-density, spread out, and disconnected development. Within the Phoenix Metropolitan Area comes a new development, Culdesac, that creates car-free living geared towards alternate transit methods. This new neighborhood offers a more sustainable urban form that contrasts Phoenix and has potential to increase walkability in the city. After examining case studies of Vauban, Germany; Masdar City, Abu Dhabi; and Fruitvale, California as examples of sustainable development with a focus on alternate transit, this paper compares these examples to the future of Culdesac. A list of principles of walkability including public participation, scale, creativity, adherence to principles, government cooperation, and transportation help to guide this comparison and determine whether Culdesac is a possible method to increase sustainable urban form in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.
ContributorsKelly, Gracie (Author) / Kelley, Jason (Thesis director) / Jamme, Hue-Tam (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2023-12
Description
The cost of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from ambient air needs to be greatly reduced if it is to contribute significantly to mitigating climate change. Ion-exchange resin (IER) with quaternary ammonium cation binds CO2 when dry and releases it when wet without supplemental energy, making the process attractive for economical Direct Air Capture (DAC). In this study, a design case basis was developed for a system of collectors capable of capturing 1000 tons/day of CO2 via moisture swing sorption. The model uses varying weather parameters such as temperature, wind speed, and relative humidity to understand the impact of weather on the sorbent loading, cycle time (capture and regeneration), and net water loss. Two independent isotherm models, namely Flory Huggins and the modified Langmuir isotherm model were used to estimate the water and CO2 loading of the resin respectively as a function of relative humidity. The capture model suggests a higher capture rate during the summer and daytime (in a diurnal cycle) as the relative humidity is lower. A design optimization model was developed to minimize the capture time and maximize the sorbent loading. The crude rate production and the net water loss can help conduct an economic analysis to determine the cost of carbon capture.
ContributorsTalha, Mohammad Abu (Author) / Green, Matthew (Thesis advisor) / Lackner, Klaus (Committee member) / Cirucci, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Sustainability is a significant and widespread issue in the global fashion industry. This thesis details some of the current practices the fashion industry carries out as well as the laws that specifically govern the fashion industry and the practices it can take to be more sustainable. It also explores consumers’ perceptions, values, and behaviors relating to sustainable products in both the general consumer market and specifically in the fashion industry. The conclusions of this thesis are that the green consumer group expands into many different consumer categories, they consider sustainability as part of a set of other attributes while fashion shopping, and they may need help with identifying green products. To cater to this large segment of consumers, fashion brands should clearly and transparently identify their sustainable product offerings while considering their target market’s values and behaviors.
ContributorsEngel, Emily (Author) / Eaton, John (Thesis director) / Mokwa, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2023-12
ContributorsEngel, Emily (Author) / Eaton, John (Thesis director) / Mokwa, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2023-12
ContributorsEngel, Emily (Author) / Eaton, John (Thesis director) / Mokwa, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2023-12
Description
Climate change is a well-known global threat to societal systems; however, its effects on
the health of individuals are often less evident. Physicians who aim to properly treat patients
holistically must be educated on the various forms of illness and disease projected to be
exacerbated by climate change. Without this necessary climate education, physicians run the risk of being unable to fulfill the most sacred charge of the Hippocratic oath: Do No Harm. To
ensure that physicians moving forward are prepared to face this new global health threat, the
prevalence of climate change in current medical school curricula must be examined. Content
analysis of publicly available medical school curricula in the Southwest U.S. was done using
ChatGPT to track the frequency of climate health search terms. Medical school curricula
analyzed included mandatory degree programs as well as optional dual degree programs or
pathways for medical student education. Researchers found that medical schools within the
Southwest region of the United States are not sufficiently preparing students to mitigate the
regional effects of climate change on the health of patients. Mandatory medical degree
curriculum does not sufficiently educate on climate health issues, nor is it present in Utah, New
Mexico, or Colorado. Optional degrees and pathways are available to medical students to enroll
in and may be sufficient to educate a medical student, but are not enticing enough to sufficiently
educate all medical students. Some medical schools have recently conducted revisals of their
mandatory curriculum and still show a lack of education available about climate health issues.
The lack of educational resources for future providers could lead to detrimental health outcomes
for patients, and medical schools in development should take the lead in educating their students about climate health issues.
ContributorsGutierrez, Sean (Author) / Jamieson, Ann (Co-author) / Vanos, Jennifer (Thesis director) / Lobo, Jose (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2023-12
Description
University-level sustainability education in Western academia attempts to focus on eliminating future harm to people and the planet. However, Western academia as an institution upholds systems of oppression and reproduces settler colonialism. This reproduction is antithetical to sustainability goals as it continues patterns of Indigenous erasure and extractive relationships to the Land that perpetuate violence towards people and the planet. Sustainability programs, however, offer several frameworks, including resilience, that facilitate critical interrogations of social-ecological systems. In this thesis, I apply the notion of resilience to the perpetuation of settler colonialism within university-level sustainability education. Specifically, I ask: How is settler colonialism resilient in university-level sustainability education? How are, or could, sustainability programs in Western academic settings address settler colonialism? Through a series of conversational interviews with faculty and leadership from Arizona State University School of Sustainability, I analyzed how university-level sustainability education is both challenging and shaped by settler colonialism. These interviews focused on faculty perspectives on the topic and related issues; the interviews were analyzed using thematic coding in NVivo software. The results of this project highlight that many faculty members are already concerned with and focused on challenging settler colonialism, but that settler colonialism remains resilient in this system due to feedback loops at the personal level and reinforcing mechanisms at the institutional level. This research analyzes these feedback loops and reinforcing mechanisms, among others, and supports the call for anti-colonial and decolonial reconstruction of curriculum, as well as a focus on relationship building, shifting of mindset, and school-wide education on topics of white supremacy, settler colonialism, and systems of oppression in general.
ContributorsBills, Haven (Author) / Klinsky, Sonja (Thesis advisor) / Goebel, Janna (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022