Final Paper: A Comprehensive Sustainability Argument

For this final paper, you are pulling together the aspects of sustainability, LCA, LCCA, triple bottom line, and circular economy that we have learned and practiced this quarter.

Write a proposal for a new LCA that introduces sustainability concepts and provides a clear path forward to implement sustainability. Your audience is a decision-maker or a person who can be influenced using persuasive writing techniques.

Your audience is defined by your goal statement. For example, your audience may be the US public or a decision-maker at a for-profit company. Perhaps your audience is a US regulatory body. No matter who you define as your audience, you should assume that the audience is intelligent but uninformed. Your goal is to inform and persuade.

You must also demonstrate research, critical thinking and integrate a minimum of six quality resources that directly relate to your proposal and how sustainability concepts can be applied effectively in the workplace or in your community.

Final paper requirements:

Your final proposal paper should be 6-8 pages long in APA 7th edition student format (title page, abstract page, and reference pages do not count towards the page count). At least six scholarly resources are also required for this paper. In addition to the Introduction and Conclusion, your report should cover the following main topics:

Overview of Sustainability Concepts

In this section of the paper, you should define the key sustainability concepts that apply to your proposal, using relevant examples and sources. The idea is to inform the reader of the basics and indirectly convince them about the benefits of sustainability before you attempt to propose your more complex solution. Since you will likely be calling your reader to action, you must make your argument strong enough to convince your audience to re-allocate time or resources to implement your proposal. Your definitions and explanations should include the key concepts of life cycle thinking, life cycle assessment, and triple bottom line, plus other concepts relevant to your proposal, such as life cycle cost analysis and circular economy. Note: I recommend that each of these concepts be organized under a second-level heading in your paper.

Hint: Assignments in earlier modules (4-7) covered many of the sustainability concepts. You should find it useful to review your previous assignments (and feedback) for this section of your paper. You may self-plagiarize some parts of your own work. However, "cut and paste" will likely not allow your proposal to flow well. Some revisions will be needed. Your illustrative examples should be a consistent product or service that is the overall topic for your paper.

Sustainability Proposal

This part of your paper describes your proposed study, which should be a life cycle assessment. Your proposal must cover your short-term plans in detail and be backed up with credible evidence that the proposal would work. Your audience will not divert time, effort, or resources on a proposal that is not convincing. Your paper should not be summarizing an LCA study that has been completed; you should be proposing a new study. However, your proposal may be an extension or variation of a previous study, which your proposal will clearly explain. For example, you can limit the scope of your proposed LCA differently, such as using different life cycle stages or geography or limiting the inputs or outputs.

Include the following in your proposal. Note: These are probably second-level headings in your paper.

Goal Statement(s) Make sure the goal statement includes unambiguous statements about the following:

1. The intended application (why do the study?)
2. The reasons for carrying out the study (what will be done with the study in the short term and long term?)
3. The audience (who will care about it? - who are you trying to convince?)
4. Whether the results will be used in comparative assertions released publicly (what is the context?)

Scope Make sure the scope includes:

1. The product or system to be studied
2. The functional units
3. The system boundaries - You may wish to limit the scope by
   • focusing on a particular life cycle stage (i.e. material extraction, manufacturing, use or disposition)
   • limiting the region (i.e. Ellensburg, WA state, USA, North America)
   • analyzing only one type of input (i.e. energy, $) or output (i.e. CO₂ emissions, $

Proposed Data Collection Methods

Your audience will want to know that their efforts will make a difference. Thus, you must propose a unified method that has worked successfully in the past. Use credible sources for ideas and also to demonstrate to your audience that your idea has precedent. If you wish, your proposal may build upon previous methods.

You may wish to discuss the type of inventory analysis (inventory inputs and outputs) that would be required for a life cycle assessment. No matter how you frame your method, be sure to include the type of data to collect and how these data would be validated.

Expected Benefits and Trade-Offs

This section should discuss how your ideas will improve the product/service lifecycle in the short and longer-term. When you write about benefits, you should consider your audience very carefully. What social (i.e. helping communities) benefits exist? What environmental benefits exist? What cost improvements (i.e. first cost and ongoing cost) might exist? In other words, discuss how your proposal will address (if approved) each of the triple bottom line concepts in a quantitative fashion. You are welcome to estimate as needed as long as the estimates make sense and are well-explained. Your proposal may include a statement that says you intend to investigate the life cycle costs of your proposal as part of the research.

If your proposal is successful, how would you use the assessment results to effectively influence decision-making?

• What would motivate your audience to support your longer-term efforts?
• How would you convince more key decision-makers to implement your proposal? Would a risk assessment or additional cost analysis help?
• In other words, if your short-term "Phase I" proposal is successful, what are your longer-term sustainability plans and how will those plans help your audience?

Hint: You might consider 3 third-level headings in this section that address each triple bottom line concept for your chosen product/service. For example:

Environmental benefits

For the environmental benefits, you should quantitatively discuss how your functional unit or cost comparisons might improve sustainability. Be sure to describe how you will measure the environmental benefit.

Social benefits

For the social benefits, you should consider discussing how communities' or workers' health or well-being will be improved. Try to quantitate, if possible.

Cost benefits

For the costs, you may estimate how first costs and ongoing costs are affected or you could simply propose to analyze costs in more detail as part of your proposal.

Conclusion

Remember the introduction should tell the reader what the report will include, and the conclusion should summarize what was presented. The introduction should have a first-level heading that is the title of the paper. The conclusion has a first-level heading of Conclusion.

References are on a separate page with the first-level heading of References. They are listed in alphabetical order. See the Purdue OWL site for specifics about APA 7th edition student paper formatting.