Twenty-Second International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

In design education, and higher education broadly, faculty research and teach aspects of sustainability. Antithetically, traditional approaches to education are often reliant on significant consumption of materials or energy. For instance, though many accreditation standards require design educators to teach about sustainability, design education is founded on the production of drawings and physical models, resulting in a substantial amount of waste, much of which is not recyclable. What is more, information about whether students practice basic sustainable actions, such as recycling, in their academic lives is lacking. Therefore, two design programs in states with moderate recycling practices but different approaches to sustainable education conducted waste audits over two consecutive years to measure the environmental impact of design education and to decipher student recycling behaviors. The audits provided insights on the materials students consume and discard as well as faculty influence on their behaviors. Outcomes made clear that further education for both faculty and students is necessary. Jamie Cloud describes Education for Sustainability (EfS) in that “Thinking drives behavior, and behavior causes results. If you don’t like the results, the most upstream place to intervene is the thinking.” (Pajuli & Logan, 2011). In essence, educators are in a unique position to shift thinking and behavior, beginning with their pedagogical approaches and students. As a catalyst, the waste audits will be shared as case studies and transferable lessons, including methods, unique circumstances encountered, and results, along with proposed guidelines, a sustainability-minded approach, to help educators in all disciplines practice what they teach.