Final Paper: A Comprehensive Sustainability Argument
For this final paper, you are pulling together the aspects of sustainability, LCA, LCCA, triple bottom line and circular economy that we have learned and practiced in the previous modules.
Write a proposal that introduces sustainability concepts and provides a clear path forward to implement sustainability. Your audience is a decision maker or a person who can be influenced using persuasive writing techniques.
Your audience is defined by your goal statement. For example, your audience may be the US public or a decision maker at a for-profit company. Perhaps your audience is a US regulatory body. No matter who you define as your audience, you should assume that the audience is intelligent, but uniformed. Your goal is to 1) inform and 2) persuade.
You must also demonstrate research, critical thinking and integrate a minimum of six (6) quality peer-reviewed resources that directly relate to your proposal and how sustainability concepts can be applied effectively in the workplace or in your community.
Final paper requirements:
Your final proposal paper should be at least 6 pages long in APA (7th edition) format (title page, abstract page, and reference pages do not count towards the page count). A minimum of six (6) quality peer-reviewed resources are also required for this paper. Four (4) of these must be from peer-reviewed journal articles. In addition to the Introduction and Conclusion, your report should cover the following main topics:
Overview of Sustainability Concepts
In this section you should define the key sustainability concepts (i.e. life cycle thinking, life cycle assessment, life cycle cost analysis, triple bottom line, circular economy) that apply to your proposal, using relevant examples and sources. The idea is to inform the reader of the basics and indirectly convince them about the benefits of sustainability before you attempt to propose your more complex solution. Since you will likely be calling your reader to action, you must make your argument strong enough to convince your audience to re-allocate time or resources to implement your proposal.
Hint #1: Your Part 1 assessment paper covered many of the sustainability concepts you may choose to use for this section of your paper. You may self-plagiarize some parts of your own work. However, “cut and paste” will likely not allow your proposal to flow well. Some revision will be needed and not all of the definitions will be needed depending upon you goal and scope.
Hint #2: You MUST describe TBL later in your proposal, so you should define it here in this section.
Sustainability Proposal
Your proposal must cover your short term plans in detail and be backed up with credible evidence that the proposal would work. Your audience will not divert time, effort, or resources on a proposal that is not convincing.
Be sure to include the following in your proposal:
• Goal Statement(s)
Make sure the goal statement includes unambiguous statements about the following:
1. The intended application (why do the study?)
2. The reasons for carrying out the study (what will be done with the study in the short term and long term?)
3. The audience (who will care about it? – who are you trying to convince?)
4. Whether the results will be used in comparative assertions released publicly (what is the context?)
• Scope
Make sure the scope includes:
1. The product or system to be studied
2. The system boundaries – You may wish to limit scope by
 focusing on a particular life cycle stage (i.e. material extraction, manufacturing, use or disposition)
 limiting the region (i.e. Ellensburg, WA state, USA, North America)
 analyzing only one type of input (i.e. energy, $) or output (i.e. CO2 emissions, $)
3. The functional units
• Proposed Data Collection Methods
Your audience will want to know that their efforts will make a difference. Thus, you must propose a unified method that has worked successfully in the past. Use credible sources for ideas and also to demonstrate to your audience that your idea has precedent. If you wish, your proposal may build upon previous methods.
You may wish to discuss the type of inventory analysis (inventory inputs and outputs) that would be required for a life cycle assessment. No matter how your frame your method, be sure to include the type of data to collect and how these data would be validated.
• Benefit(s) and Trade-Offs
When you write about benefits, you should consider your audience very carefully. Nearly everyone thinks about costs in some capacity. Thus, costs as well as the planet (environment) and people (social) should be considered when discussing benefits. In other words, you are providing an impact assessment of your proposal using triple bottom line concepts.
• Interpretation – Applying the Results of your Proposal
If your proposal is successful, how would you use the assessment results to effectively influence decision-making?
o What would motivate your audience to support your longer term efforts?
o How would you convince more key decision makers to implement your proposal? Would a risk assessment or additional cost analysis help?
o In other words, if your short term “Phase I” proposal is successful, what are your longer term sustainability plans and how will those plans help your audience?

Remember the introduction should tell the reader what the report will include, and the conclusion should summarize what was presented.