OUR CURRICULUM IS focused on the following concepts

• Educate about circular economy concept, difference between linear and circular economy, the 10 R’s of a circular economy, and its importance  and application to real-world issues.  

• LIFE CYCLE MAPPING : Students are provided with thinking exercises about life cycle mapping of everyday products. The goal of this activity is to impact the ability of youth to think about the full life of the things that we use in our daily lives.  Everyday objects are fascinating in their complexity and understanding about their life cycle at different stages helps to differentiate between the linear and circular systems and impacts our decision of creating, using, or disposing them.  

• ENVIRONMENTAL CENTERED DESIGN THINKING: Introduce the concept of Environmental Centered Design thinking.  Everything that surrounds us has been designed by someone: the clothes we wear, the buildings we live in, even the way we get our food.  Demonstrate examples of design thinking adopted by various companies and educate youth about its five phases—Define,  Inspiration and empathy, opportunities, Ideate, and experiment.  Emphasize the importance of environmental centered design thinking  as an integral part of Circular Economy.  Demonstrate by examples how does design thinking helps to solve complex problems in our communities.

• WISH-CYCLING: Explain the hazards of Wish-cycling. Wish-cycling is the thinking  or behavioral practice of recycling items that cannot be re finding a way to re-purpose palm fronds could lighten the landfill load cycled. It stems from good intention, wish or hope that something can be recycled.   This belief boils down to the idea that just about anything can be recycled, and that if you put it into a recycling bin, it will inevitably find a way to get recycled.   The non-recyclable items can contaminate the recyclable goods, sometimes requiring entire batches of recyclables to be thrown away. Improperly recycling greasy pizza boxes, broken glasses, plastic shopping bags, or anything else that either cannot be recycled or has specific recycling requirements, wreaks havoc on the recycling process. It ends up costing recycling companies more time and money or the reason behind contributing more junk to our overflowing landfills. 

• ENVIRONMENTAL MAPPING AND SCREENING : Educate youth about ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE by demonstrating example of Eastern Coachella Valley using  CalEnviroscreen and EJScreen .  Initiate conversations among youth about the impact of their behavior and actions on communities with low-socioeconomic backgrounds burdened with disproportionate numbers of hazards including toxic waste facilitates, garbage dumps, and other sources of environmental pollutions. Communicate and explain relationship between circular economy and environmental justice.

• Circular Economy in Coachella Valley: We share the work of local organizations and entrepreneurs as environmental centered design thinking  examples in circular economy right here in Coachella Valley.

• Discuss the national and international happenings and developments in products, services or policies about CIRCULAR ECONOMY.