Upcycling for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education …
379
that turns goods at the end of their service life into resources for others, closing loops
in industrial ecosystems (Stahel 2016)—including upcycling into design education
as they are convinced that designing for CE requires disruptive innovations starting
from design schools with radical curriculum change. Dharmasasmita et al. (2017)
suggested upcycling as one of potential new activities for Sustainable Challenge
Days which have been run as part of Sustainability in Practice Certificate initiative in
the university in order to teach the concept and practices of sustainability in support
of sustainable development.
Two articles reported the cases that upcycling was used to teach sustainable practice in fashion and product design. Lee and DeLong (2018) pointed out the issue
of Korean fashion industry’s stock increase and hence high maintenance fees for
warehouses and managers as well as wasteful disposal of unsold products. Fashion
upcycling was therefore used for the university-industry collaboration project to provide participating students with the opportunities to experience sustainable fashion
design and remanufacture in industry, while helping the partner company to reduce
their cost and waste. In Park’s case (2014), the collaborative product development
project based on upcycling (in order to offer comprehensive career and development
services for the military community) aimed to offer students (in the department of
design and merchandising) an innovative learning opportunity in sustainability with
a real-life scenario.
One article described the case that upcycling was used to teach entrepreneur
awareness and mind-set to students in an entrepreneurship module/course because
entrepreneurs are often faced with a lack of resources and have to make do with what
is at hand (i.e. the materials available cheaply or for free) (Robinson et al. 2016).
Upcycling (or bricolage) as a group assignment taught students how to embrace
resource constraints, ignore barriers and actively engage with problems by improvising.
4 Conclusions
Most articles were published by academic staff members in universities predominantly from the areas of business management, design, sustainability and engineering, which may imply that these areas are relatively more pertinent than others for
utilising upcycling for and in higher education. All seven articles were published
between 2014 and 2018, which confirms that research on upcycling for and in higher
education is in its infant stage. This new area of research has been explored chiefly
by European researchers, which may mean European higher education institutions’
collective, stronger emphasis on embedding sustainability (or contributing to Sustainable Development Goals). In each publication, upcycling was used as a concept
and/or a practice. When using upcycling as a concept, the articles frequently referred
to the seminal work by Braungart and McDonough. It was interchangeably used with
‘rebirth design’ in fashion and with bricolage in entrepreneurship. The concept of
upcycling was used as educational contents (i.e. solutions or frameworks for or gen-
379
that turns goods at the end of their service life into resources for others, closing loops
in industrial ecosystems (Stahel 2016)—including upcycling into design education
as they are convinced that designing for CE requires disruptive innovations starting
from design schools with radical curriculum change. Dharmasasmita et al. (2017)
suggested upcycling as one of potential new activities for Sustainable Challenge
Days which have been run as part of Sustainability in Practice Certificate initiative in
the university in order to teach the concept and practices of sustainability in support
of sustainable development.
Two articles reported the cases that upcycling was used to teach sustainable practice in fashion and product design. Lee and DeLong (2018) pointed out the issue
of Korean fashion industry’s stock increase and hence high maintenance fees for
warehouses and managers as well as wasteful disposal of unsold products. Fashion
upcycling was therefore used for the university-industry collaboration project to provide participating students with the opportunities to experience sustainable fashion
design and remanufacture in industry, while helping the partner company to reduce
their cost and waste. In Park’s case (2014), the collaborative product development
project based on upcycling (in order to offer comprehensive career and development
services for the military community) aimed to offer students (in the department of
design and merchandising) an innovative learning opportunity in sustainability with
a real-life scenario.
One article described the case that upcycling was used to teach entrepreneur
awareness and mind-set to students in an entrepreneurship module/course because
entrepreneurs are often faced with a lack of resources and have to make do with what
is at hand (i.e. the materials available cheaply or for free) (Robinson et al. 2016).
Upcycling (or bricolage) as a group assignment taught students how to embrace
resource constraints, ignore barriers and actively engage with problems by improvising.
4 Conclusions
Most articles were published by academic staff members in universities predominantly from the areas of business management, design, sustainability and engineering, which may imply that these areas are relatively more pertinent than others for
utilising upcycling for and in higher education. All seven articles were published
between 2014 and 2018, which confirms that research on upcycling for and in higher
education is in its infant stage. This new area of research has been explored chiefly
by European researchers, which may mean European higher education institutions’
collective, stronger emphasis on embedding sustainability (or contributing to Sustainable Development Goals). In each publication, upcycling was used as a concept
and/or a practice. When using upcycling as a concept, the articles frequently referred
to the seminal work by Braungart and McDonough. It was interchangeably used with
‘rebirth design’ in fashion and with bricolage in entrepreneurship. The concept of
upcycling was used as educational contents (i.e. solutions or frameworks for or gen-