Assignment 1 – Waste prevention and Recycling

Choose a recent non-academic article where one or several of the following aspects of waste management are discussed:

• Waste prevention
• The zero waste society
• Circular economy
• Sorting-at-source, collection or post-collection sorting of waste
• Material recycling
• Material or energy efficiency

A non-academic article can be taken from a newspaper, a popular science journal, a magazine, a radio program or even a television program. It should not be an article from an academic peer-reviewed journal.

Advice on article choice:

• Anything that comes from a peer-reviewed journal is a scientific article (e.g. anything from Elsevier, etc. is out of scope).
  
• There are plenty of non-scientific newspapers. For instance: : The Guardian, Times, The Economist, New scientist, and many more. You could even go for more specialized ones: Recycling Magazine, Waste Advantage Magazine, and many others.
• With the advent of internet media, journalists have a tendency to write some extremely short articles to generate click-bait and revenues for their journals. If possible, try to avoid these very short articles, as they are also probably very poor in contents.

Part 1 – Summary (3 points)

Write a summary of the article you have selected (350 words ± 10%).

 Important remarks:

• Writing a summary is a difficult analysis and communication exercise. The purpose of a summary is to provide the reader with a complete overview of the original article in a condensed format.
  
• Fidelity to original text: all the essential ideas and statements shall be included in the summary. The statements are written in a neutral way, without adding any personal analysis or reflection.
• Concision: Since it is a condensed format (with a word limit), you shall never write unnecessary locative statements like “In the article, the authors says that…” or “then, the article describes…”.
• Style: The summary is written using your own words and style, you shall not “copy-paste” whole sentences from the original article.

Part 2 – Essay (5 points)

Discuss the themes and points raised by the article from your own point of view (700 words ± 10%).

Important remarks:

• Structure your essay, e.g. with a brief introduction announcing the main themes and points you will discuss), a series of paragraphs discussing each theme with connectors and transitions, and a brief conclusion.
• Writing style should remain formal.
• Your statements should be based on facts and well supported by evidence or examples, e.g. through the use of references.
• A reference list should be provided on a separate page, in an appropriate style. The reference list is not counted in the word limit. References must be used in the text where appropriate.

Part 3 – Formality, language and referencing style (2 point)

Two points are given for good structure of the submitted report, quality of language, referencing style, handling of citations, and quality of references. Note: in the next assignments, this part will only be worth 1 point.

Note

• Mention somewhere in your assignment the article you have used, e.g. before your summary, give title and link to the article.
• It is mandatory to answer all questions
• Use the template provided for the assignments: ASSIGNMENT TEMPLATE.docx Download ASSIGNMENT TEMPLATE.docx
• The course literature includes, among other: lecture slides, list of references provided on Canvas, and course book. You are encouraged to include extra sources of information in your essay, in particular, scientific research articles.

Grading

0 – 4 = Fail, possibility to re-submit assignment by end of the course, to get at best a Pass

5 – 7 = Pass

8 – 10 = Pass with distinction