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DATE LECTURE WORKSHOP TEACHER SESSION
Oct 30
4 - 6 PM
PROGRAM LAUNCH
Introduction to Excessive
Plastic Waste Accumulation
How does Excessive Plastic
Waste Accumulation relate
to you?
Challenge Expert Q&A
Speaker: John Robinson
Interim Work Challenge Background Readings
Nov 13
4 - 6 PM
SESSION I
World Vision Canada:
“Solutions to Plastic Waste
Accumulation”
Causal Model Secondary Research
Resources: Suzie Choi
Secondary Research leveraging UofT Resources
Dec 4
4 - 6 PM
SESSION II
Content Expert Interviews/Inquiry
Interview Strategies:
Speaker: Angela Vemic
Inquiry: Students research Excessive Plastic Waste Accumulation issues and interview
solution-providers in their communities
Jan 15
4 - 6 PM
SESSION III
Technical Solution: Pyrowave Sharing Interview Insights
Interview Teacher Share &
Exemplars of Devastating
Fact Video
Prototyping a Solution – Students Prepare a 1 min. Pitch
Feb 26
4 - 6 PM
SESSION IV
Technical Solution:
Greenmantra
Student Pitch Session Student Pitch Sessions
Idea Iteration – Business Model Canvas
Mar 5
4 - 6 PM
SESSION V
“REACH” Business Model Canvas
GII Q&A
Speaker: Joe Wong
Idea Development using the Business Model Canvas
Mar 26
4 - 6 PM
SESSION VI
“Behavioural Economics:
Considering the User
Perspective”
Mapping the Stakeholder
Journey
GII Q&A
Speaker: Dilip Soman
Idea Development using the Business Model Canvas
Mar 26–Apr 12
At Schools
4 - 6 PM
SESSION VII
Polishing your Pitch Working
Session – Mentors on
Location
Pitch Prep Working Session
Final Pitch/Final Symposium Deliverables
Apr 12
8:30 - 4:30 FINAL SYMPOSIUM
+light snacks and refreshments will be served at each monthly lecture
GII Roadmap 2018 – 2019
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Dilip Soman’s research expertise lies in: Bottom of the pyramid, Behavioural Economics, Consumer and Managerial Psychology, Public Policy, Spending and Saving Behaviours, Decision-Making, Marketing Strategy and Pricing. In addition to teaching at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, Dilip has Also taught at: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Indian School of Business, University of Chicago, National University of Singapore Dilip served as an associate editor of the Journal of
Marketing Research, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology and Marketing Letters. He was recently named as one of the “professors to watch for” by the Financial Times (London) newspaper. He is the recipient of several teaching and research awards. Dilip’s current research focuses on “helping people help themselves” using insights from mental accounting and the psychology of time. In this work, he used informational (e.g. financial literacy), facilitative (e.g., budgeting tools, communication devices like mobile phones and the Internet) and behavioural (e.g., self-control guidelines) interventions to help people achieve financial sufficiency. This research is being done in Canada, India, China, and Thailand, and is partially funded by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, The Desautels Center, and the AIC Institute at the Rotman School. He also does similar research in the area of health behaviours, energy conservation, garbage and recycling, and time management. He is also interested more generally in using interventions from psychology, technology and the management sciences to help develop the bottom-of-the-pyramid market.
GII Speaker: Dilip Soman
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Company Overview: In 2013, the world’s largest coffee chain, Starbucks Coffee Company (Starbucks), introduced a US$1 reusable cup in its stores in the US, Canada and in the UK. The company came up with the idea of a plastic reusable cup to reduce its environmental footprint as it often faced criticism from environmental enthusiasts for generating 4 billion single-serve cups as trash each year that ended up in landfills or as litter. More than the offerings, the company focused on selling a ‘third place’ experience, and the stores became places for relaxing, chatting with friends, reading the newspaper, holding business meetings, or browsing the Web. The ‘experience’ brought spectacular success for the store. Starbucks was considered an iconic brand and most of its customers were passionate about it. Of the customers, 8% were repeat customers. For the year ended September 30, 2012, the company had earned revenue of US$ 13.29 billion and net income of US$ 1.38 billion. As of 2013, Starbucks operated in 62 countries, employing around 200,000 people worldwide whom it called partners.1
Starbuck’s cup problem:
When plastic straws became a symbol of environmental destruction, Starbucks swiftly came up with a plan: Get rid of them. The company redesigned its cold cup lids so they won’t require a straw at all. By 2020, Starbucks said, it will eliminate single-use plastic straws at its more than 29,800 locations around the world. It was a remarkably quick fix, considering the company has spent 30 years trying to come up with a greener alternative to another object: its iconic paper cup. Cups are Starbucks’ billboard. They’re a canvas for the Starbucks logo, for your order, your name and for
1 Wiener-Bronner D., (2019). CNN Business News. Forget Plastic Straws. Starbucks has a cup problem. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/02/business/starbucks-cup-problem/index.html
Case study: Behavioral Economics and Starbucks cups problem
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cheerful graphics that signal the holidays are here. As long as they make customers feel good, they’re a big asset to the company. Starbucks used 3.85 billion paper cups for hot beverages in 2017 alone. If a similar backlash were to happen to the single-use coffee cup, which is lined with plastic and not recyclable in most places, the company would suddenly have a big problem on its hands. Why the paper cup is hard to recycle? While technically, Starbucks’ cups can be recycled under the right circumstances, they usually are not. Most facilities don’t recycle paper cups because to do so, they would have to separate the cups’ plastic lining from the paper. Many recyclers find that process to be more trouble than it’s worth. If recycling facilities try to recycle paper cups without separating out materials first, the plastic lining is likely to jam up their machines. That makes the cups effectively non-recyclable at most facilities. Instead, the cups usually end up in landfills or the environment, where the plastic lining can break down into microplastics that may harm marine life or enter the human food chain.
Case Questions:
• What are the issues and challenges in convincing consumers to adopt reusable cups?
• How is consumer behaviour and behavioural economics relevant to this case?
• What is the consumer’s optimal choice under budget constraints?
• Explore ways in which Starbucks can address the issues related to the cups effectively.
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Circulate Capital and Ocean Conservancy publish first-of-its-kind investment guide to help solve South & Southeast Asia ocean plastic crisis2
Last week at The Economist World Ocean Summit in Abu Dhabi, Circulate Capital — the investment management firm dedicated to incubating and financing companies and infrastructure that prevent ocean plastic in South and Southeast Asia (SSEA) — in partnership with Ocean Conservancy, released "Investing to Reduce Plastic Pollution in South and Southeast Asia: A handbook for action," a guide aimed at catalyzing investment around immediate solutions to SSEA's ocean plastic crisis. Culminating more than a year of research and building on Ocean Conservancy's seminal Stemming the Tide report, the handbook is a first-of-its-kind, open-sourced guide to investment opportunities in SSEA's municipal waste management and recycling infrastructure sectors, the two sectors in the region identified by Circulate and Ocean Conservancy as having the most solutions ready to scale. It lays out a variety of factors impacting the entire plastics value chain to help investors evaluate opportunities and deploy assets in the region. The handbook also provides valuable insight for the many other actors who will play critical roles in scaling these sectors and developing a circular economy in SSEA — including governments, NGOs, entrepreneurs and academic institutions.
Key findings from the handbook include:
• Leveraging support from national governments and establishing an appropriate policy enabling environment while working at a very local level with cities and municipalities are both critical to success
• There are larger investment opportunities downstream (processing and reuse) in the plastic value chain, with smaller early stage opportunities upstream (collection and sorting)
• We need systematic investment within a specific wasteshed, as well as discrete investment approaches along the plastic value chain
• India and Indonesia currently provide the most readily available investment opportunities in the region
• Implementation challenges remain despite comprehensive national solid waste management legislation
2 Sustainable Brands (2019). Trending: Collaborations Continue to Fuel Solutions to Plastic Pollution. Retrieved from https://sustainablebrands.com/read/collaboration-cocreation/trending-collaborations-continue-to-fuel-solutions-to-plastic-pollution?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=newsletterweekly&utm_campaign=mar14
Collaborations Continue to Fuel Solutions to Plastic Pollution
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Science Article: L. Brooks A., et Al., (2018) Science Advances, Environmental Studies. The Chinese import ban
and its impact on global plastic waste trade. Retrieved from
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/6/eaat0131/tab-pdf
News and general articles:
Eco Business, (2019). Circulate Capital and Ocean Conservancy publish first-of-its-kind investment guide to help solve South & Southeast Asia ocean plastic crisis. Retrieved from https://www.eco-business.com/press-releases/circulate-capital-and-ocean-conservancy-publish-first-of-its-kind-investment-guide-to-help-solve-south-southeast-asia-ocean-plastic-crisis/ Greenbiz, (2018). How Dow Chemical and Boise are taking aim at plastics. Retrieved from https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-dow-chemical-and-boise-are-taking-aim-plastics Katz, Cheryl., (2019). Yale Environment 360. Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling. Retrieved from https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-importing-waste-has-stalled-global-recycling Trudel R., (2016) Harvard Business Review. The Behavioural economics of Recycling. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-behavioral-economics-of-recycling World Economic Forum (2019). 5 Steps that could end the plastic pollution crisis and save our oceans. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/5-steps-that-could-end-the-plastic-pollution-crisis-and-save-our-oceans-eb7d4caf24/
Video: Crash Course Criticism. (2016), Behavioral Economics, Episode #27. Retrieved from http://www.crashcoursecriticism.com/2016/05/05/behavioral-economics-episode-27/
Session VII: Recommended reading material
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Venue School
FE025 Bayview Glen School
Bishop Marrocco Thomas Merton CSS
FE137
Bloor Collegiate Institute
Branksome Hall
Don Mills Collegiate Institute
FE326 East York Collegiate Institute
Havergal College
FE327 Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute
LAWS - Harbord Collegiate Institute
OI7192
Malvern Collegiate Institute
Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute
North Park Secondary School
OI8180
Northern Secondary School
Pickering College
Pickering High School
OI8200
Sandalwood Heights Secondary School
St Clement's School
TFS - Canada's International School
OI8214
The York School
University of Toronto Schools
Upper Canada College
FE114 Teachers
Breakout Rooms