Online Course on Sustainable Packaging
By Esra Polat, Ruud Balkenende, TU Delft
Already over 13.000 participants worldwide have learned about ‘Sustainable Packaging in a Circular Economy’ in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) developed by TU Delft.
A large amount of discarded packaging is not properly disposed, collected, sorted or recycled. They end up in incineration and landfill, leading to a polluted environment. Moreover, functionality and material value are lost forever. So, how can we improve our current packaging systems in order to capture this wasted potential and reduce environmental impact? Clearly, we need to understand the root of the packaging problem and rethink the way we design, recover, and (re)use packaging.
This is what the MOOC ‘Sustainable Packaging in a Circular Economy’ deals with. It teaches about the design of sustainable packaging systems by exploring design principles and business strategies for a circular economy. Opportunities for designing with renewable, bio-based materials are discussed. Promising steps are illustrated by showing best practices from industry through case studies and interviews.
The MOOC started in autumn 2018 and has been running non-stop since then in either a self-paced mode or a moderated instructor-paced version. The course is especially interesting for professionals as well as students with basic knowledge of the circular economy and an interest in packaging. They can start studying anytime.
This is what some previous course participants had to say about it:
“I particularly appreciated the perspectives from people in industry and contrasting them with those of the faculty. I also liked how the assignments built so that, by the end, you’ve practiced analyzing every day packages. “
“Excellent mix of educational training, bringing experts of different aspect of the value chain, and real-life examples.”
You can visit this page to read more about the course and to enroll.