titlebar University of Washington homepage Program on the Environment homepage About PoE Undergraduate programs Graduate programs PoE News and Events Alumni Donate to PoE Contact Us

ENVIR 300

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES: SYNTHESIS AND APPLICATION


Home Page
Requirements
Paper Assignments
Quantitative Exercises
Group Projects
Course Schedule
Resource Archive

Email the Class



 FOURTH PAPER ASSIGNMENT:
RECYCLING

DUE ELECTRONICALLY MONDAY, JUNE 2 AT 5:00 P.M.

This is one of three optional topics, of which you must choose two.

For this paper, you have two choices; you may approach the topic either from a theoretical or from a policy perspective.

Option 1: Theoretical perspective: This option asks you to absorb some of the concepts and techniques discussed in the chapter on Life-Cycle Assessment by Rosselot and Allen, and to apply them to analysis of a local waste problem. Specifically, choose any local environmental problem dealing with urban waste streams. Show how an analysis of this problem would be affected by the following concepts from that chapter:
  • Setting system boundaries with regard to including or excluding specific processes in the life cycle
  • Setting system boundaries with regard to including or excluding particular waste streams or particular outputs
  • Tradeoffs between different goals
  • Tradeoffs between costs and benefits
  • Different systems of valuation
Make sure that you touch on the social and political aspects of these problems as well as the biophysical ones.

Option 2: Policy perspective: This option, like the paper on farms, asks you to combine theoretical concepts from the first part of the course with data that you have learned about the local situation, including the field trip on May 27, to come out with an ideal scenario and some idea of how we might get from here to there. Specifically, with Puget Sound City slated to grow by perhaps another million from its current 3.5m population in the next 20 years, how would you plan for the amount of various kinds of waste generated: how would you, in fact, implement the 3Rs? To answer this you will have to answer not only the quantitative questions about what can be reduced, reused or recycled, and the energy and land resources that this will take, but just as importantly what fiscal incentives, regulations, guilt trips, or other policy instruments ought to be employed to enable us to meet these goals?

Points for writing effective papers:
  • Each paper should be 1500-2000 words in length, double-spaced, with a reasonably readable font size. Part of learning to write effectively is learning to write within limits of length; this means I will not read word #2001 of the text.
  • References can be in any standard footnote, endnote, or embedded reference format. The notes or bibliography may push the total over 2000 words.
  • Papers will be graded on accuracy and pertinence of content, logic, effective and appropriate vocabulary use, cogency of argument, and elegance of argument.

Processes and grading:
  • Papers should be turned in electronically to The Instructor.
  • I will grade and return papers, with extensive comments, within one week of the due date.
  • A is 4.0, A- is 3.7, B+ is 3.3, B is 3.0, etc.
  • Late papers will be graded down one letter-scale point (A to A-, B- to C+) at 5:00 p.m. on the due date, and one more letter-scale point for each additional calendar day they are late.
  • If you choose to write 4 papers, you may drop you lowest paper grade. I don't have time to read 5 papers.