Courses Bachelor Display 2024-2025

Course Description To PDF
Course title Circular Economy Project (Life Cycle Assessment)
Course code BENP1002
ECTS credits 5,0
Assessment Whole/Half Grades
Period
Period Start End Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri
6 (BENG) 9-6-2025 6-7-2025 C
Level no level
Coordinator Yvonne van der Meer
For more information: yvonne.vandermeer@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Language of instruction English
Goals
The main aim of the course is to apply design and implementation principles of the circular economy on a value chain of a product to analyze how it can become more circular and evaluate the effects on the sustainability impact.
Description
In recent years, the concept of the Circular Economy (CE) has gained attention from governments and businesses. CE has the potential to move our current economy to a more sustainable and resource-efficient one. Through different value retention strategies, CE advocates the regeneration and redistribution of our production and consumption systems. Additionally, CE has the potential of creating improved social, economic, and environmental impact.

Re-thinking how industrial products are manufactured and designed and how we will deal with them after product use, is essential in moving towards a more circular economy. The ultimate goal is to create a future economy, which is restorative and regenerative by design. This requires a multidisciplinary approach in which the resources, processing, product design, manufacturing and scenarios at the end of the product life cycle are geared towards circularity.

Within the CE project, student teams will analyze a value chain of a product and assess the opportunities of this value chain in its quest to become more circular. They will also evaluate the effects of improved circularity on the sustainability impact. Companies will be asked to provide interesting cases for the projects. Student teams will report and present their findings at the end of the project.
Literature
* IRP (2018). Re-defining Value – The Manufacturing Revolution. Remanufacturing, Refurbishment, Repair and Direct Reuse in the Circular Economy. Nabil Nasr, Jennifer Russell, Stefan Bringezu, Stefanie Hellweg, Brian Hilton, Cory Kreiss, and Nadia von Gries. A Report of the International Resource Panel. United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya.
* Kalmykova, Y., Sadagopan, M., and Rosado, L. (2018) Circular economy – From review of theories and practices to development of implementation tools. Resour. Conserv. Recycl., 135, 190–201.
Prerequisites
None.
Keywords
Circular economy, value retention, value chain, sustainability impact
Teaching methods (indicative; course manual is definitive) PBL / Lecture / Assignment / Groupwork / Research
Assessment methods (indicative; course manual is definitive) Final Paper / Attendance / Participation / Presentation
Evaluation in previous academic year For the complete evaluation of this course please click "here"
This course belongs to the following programmes / specialisations
Bachelor Business Engineering Year 1 Project(s)