Filtering by
- All Subjects: Students
- All Subjects: Construction and Demolition Waste
- Creators: Buch, Rajesh
- Creators: Gutierrez, Veronica
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Status: Published
The built environment is responsible for a significant portion of global waste generation.
Construction and demolition (C&D) waste requires significant landfill areas and costs
billions of dollars. New business models that reduce this waste may prove to be financially
beneficial and generally more sustainable. One such model is referred to as the “Circular
Economy” (CE), which promotes the efficient use of materials to minimize waste
generation and raw material consumption. CE is achieved by maximizing the life of
materials and components and by reclaiming the typically wasted value at the end of their
life. This thesis identifies the potential opportunities for using CE in the built environment.
It first calculates the magnitude of C&D waste and its main streams, highlights the top
C&D materials based on weight and value using data from various regions, identifies the
top C&D materials’ current recycling and reuse rates, and finally estimates a potential
financial benefit of $3.7 billion from redirecting C&D waste using the CE concept in the
United States.
American Sign Language (ASL) is a manual language that communicates through gestures, facial expressions, and body language. In the United States, there are over six million sign language users (Mitchell & Young, 2022). At Arizona State University, there is a limited offering of classes for undergraduate students to take sign language; they can take up to four levels, which is satisfactory for degrees’ foreign language requirements. If students wish to proceed with their ASL education, they must transfer to a different university. The purpose of this study and subsequent research is to propose an ASL minor that can be established at ASU so that students can receive an in-depth education. Survey data was collected with the intention of determining how students felt about ASL and the addition of a potential minor. The survey findings, coupled with the secondary literature review, lead to the conclusion that establishing an American Sign Language minor is in the best interests of both the students and the University.