UCL modules with a specific circularity focus

Faculty of the Built Environment

Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources

Circular Economy in the Built Environment: Circular Economy in the Built Environment (BENV0118) - This module will introduce the concept of the Circular Economy which aims to keep resources in the environment at their highest utility and particularly focusses on applications in the Built Environment. Students will be expected to choose a component used in the built environment and use business model analysis and creative design ideas to suggest improvements to both the component and to make the business case for it.
Industrial Symbiosis: Industrial Symbiosis (BENV0036) – The module has two primary aims. First, introduce students to and reflect upon the role of industrial ecology and industrial symbiosis in moving towards more sustainable industrial systems, including discussion of key challenges and obstacles. Second, equip students with relevant methodological and analytical tools for the practical implementation of industrial ecology principles to the design of industrial parks, industrial systems and urban areas. By the end of the module, you should be able to understand the concepts of industrial ecology and industrial symbiosis as well as Circular Economy, have a basic knowledge of main methods and tools for the practical implementation of these approaches such as Material Flow Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment and have the ability to apply them to real world and business problems, be able to understand opportunities but also challenges to increase resource efficiency in industry, as well as have the ability to define strategies to turn waste into resources and exploit business opportunities associated with it.
Environmental Life-Cycle Governance: Environmental Life-Cycle Governance (BENV0120) - This module examines the emergent monitoring and governance of life-cycle environmental impacts of products, services and organisations. It draws mainly on the field of environmental policy and governance, complemented with sustainability science, business studies, sociology, and geography. The empirical focus will be on corporate and product environmental and carbon footprints as well as on their nexus to sustainable forestry certification in the area of the built environment. You will learn about the dynamic interplay between government regulation, private sector activity and sustainability science and be challenged to explore opportunities for interventions with the potential for catalytic impacts towards more sustainable resource use.
Business and Sustainability: Business and Sustainability (BENV0009) - This module is designed for students who wish to explore the relationship between sustainability and business, considering both the significant opportunities this presents as well as the tensions and challenges. It considers theoretical perspectives on value, innovation, circular economy, business models, supply chains, decision-making and reporting. It combines these with practical examples and case studies, and in-depth consideration of sustainability for particular example industry sectors.
Resource Governance and the Global South: Resource Governance and the Global South (BENV0076) - This research-led module provides the knowledge and tools to critically assess the impacts of resource access, use and management on different social groups in the Global South. You will develop a methodological grounding in qualitative and participatory research methods, as well as an understanding of the application and limitations of the policies, institutions and tools designed to promote better resource management.

Bartlett School of Planning

Sustainable Urban Development: Key Themes: Sustainable Urban Development: Key Themes (BPLN0058) – This module examines some of the key sustainability debates and literature, with a specific focus on cities. Its overall aim is to broaden the students’ understanding of the tensions and synergies between the institutional, environmental, social and economic objectives of sustainability (via lectures) and to provide an inter-disciplinary discussion of how these manifest in practice by looking at urban examples or case studies across the world (via seminars).
Sustainable Urban Development: Project: Sustainable Urban Development: Project (BPLN0106) - This module aims to apply theories and models of sustainable development and sustainability to a real life urban location/ site and develop or re-develop a large scale ‘urban plan’ at the strategic level and over a long timeframe. The module also aims to develop understanding of financial and institutional mechanisms needed to implement such a development in practice.

Development Planning Unit

The Political Ecology of Environmental Change

The Political Ecology of Environmental Change (DEVP0020) - In the first term, you will acquire an in-depth understanding of current and historical debates on development and environmental sustainability, the notion of alienation from nature and how to repair it, and an understanding of the meaning of crisis and how it could trigger a beneficial paradigm-shift. You will learn the tools for a critical analysis of discourses on sustainable development, exploring their environmental implications for countries of the global South and North.

The second term will further advance your understanding of the ways that sustainability concerns are both socially constructed and politically situated. You will develop the ability to evaluate, from a political ecology perspective, various approaches to governing environmental change at different scales and at different locations.

Food and the City

Food and the City (DEVP0026) - You will acquire an understanding of the following:

• The notion of a city-region and its flows, and how food articulates these, with a special emphasis on the chains linking all activities (production, through marketing to consumption).

• Why the current mainstream approach can’t guarantee urban food security

• Ideas for addressing problems which have always been endemic, but now highlighted by COVID: the need for resilience to shocks; to combat pernicious tendencies which exacerbate food poverty and injustice

• How agriculture relates to climate, both as cause of emissions, and as a potential mitigating factor.

• Key features of a physical approach to a sustainable farming alternative, often called ‘agroecology’. This draws on elements of no-till, natural systems agriculture, permaculture etc., and has the potential to launch a benign feedback loop of carbon sequestration and enhanced soil fertility.

• The transformative role which can be played by different actors: urban food-system planners; food-system activists; socially/environmentally conscious prosumers; people growing food within the city, whether commercially or for subsistence.

• How urban citizens can – through approaches such as Community Supported Agriculture – help revitalise small farms on a new, sustainable basis

Faculty of Engineering Sciences

Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering

Engineering for Circular Economy: Engineering for Circular Economy (CEGE0008) - By the end of the module, you should be able to understand the concepts of industrial ecology and industrial symbiosis as well as Circular Economy, have a basic knowledge of main methods and tools for the practical implementation of these approaches such as Material Flow Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment and have the ability to apply them to real world and business problems
Life Cycle Assessment: Life Cycle Assessment (CEGE0059) - Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a rapidly evolving tool used to model and quantify impacts of products, systems, or services over a range of environmental and resource issues, from a "cradle to grave" systems perspective. The module aims to give an introduction to LCA methods and how to apply them in real-life situations.
Waste and Resource Efficiency: Waste and Resource Efficiency (CEGE0064) - In the first part of this module, students will learn about global resource use, including flows of materials in major sectors, the implications for environmental, social and economic sustainability, and related concepts such as the circular economy. In the second part of the module, students will learn about waste management technologies, including reuse, recycling, energy-from-waste, landfill, in the context of their sustainability. This module aims to: give students an overall perspective on resource use and waste management in human society; provide an introduction to technologies and systems for waste and resource management.
Adaptive Reuse of Existing Structures: Adaptive Reuse of Existing Structures (CEGE0125) - This module presents ways to develop a strategy and detail structural solutions for the re-use of existing structures for a new purpose. The module presents a number of successful and not-so-successful case studies of different scales and contexts to discuss the interventions, to further highlight the open-ended nature of adaptive reuse.

Chemical Engineering

Renewable Energy in the Resources Sector: Renewable Energy in the Resources Sector (CENG0059) - This module will explore how renewable energy and the resources sector are intimately connected. After a quantitative analysis of various renewable energy operations, including solar, wind, geothermal, and other energy sources, the students will learn how the energy market is tightly connected and the hurdles that are currently preventing the further development of renewables. The students will also learn how to employ Life Cycle Assessment methods for comparing quantitatively the environmental footprint of various processes for generating energy.
Energy Systems and Sustainability: Energy Systems and Sustainability (CENG0026) – The module’s aim is to provide a broad knowledge of the requirements of both conventional and renewable energy systems and an advanced understanding of the fundamental principles that underpin select key stationary and portable energy conversion and storage technologies. Students will develop skills in the design of energy systems with an emphasis on sustainability, improving efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources.
Sustainability and Decision-Making: Sustainability and Decision-Making (CENG0062) - This module will start by introducing the students to the concepts of, and the challenges to, sustainability and sustainable development, and strictly associated approaches such as life-cycle thinking and circular economy. The module will embed approaches that support rational decision-making by incorporating multiple, and often conflicting, aspects into problems and case studies.

Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Advanced Materials for Sustainable Energy Technologies: Advanced Materials for Sustainable Energy Technologies (NSCI0021) - You will learn the impact, role and present need for sustainable transformations in the life cycle phases of modern power generation, heating, transportation as well as scavenging waste energy for varied purposes, with implications for addressing social, environmental and other impacts. You will study current state of innovations in energy science while meeting demands for critical materials and manufacturing requirements, as well as current research advancements based on global sustainability needs