“Plastic Soup? Close the Loop!”

Every minute, an average of one rubbish truck of plastic is dumped into the ocean. So we face a huge challenge worldwide to stop plastic pollution. Such 'wicked problems' call for innovative solutions that can only come from cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Despite the fact that professional practice demands it, engineering students do not work together with fellow students from other study programmes on the same learning objectives during their studies, or do so on a very limited scale. In addition, they only come into contact with organisations outside the walls of a university of applied sciences at a late stage. All this leads to a distorted picture of the future working environment. And that while complex social problems, such as the plastic soup, actually require a transdisciplinary approach to achieve innovation.
NHL Stenden is a multi-campus university of applied sciences with locations at home and abroad. Students experience the distance and travel time between locations in the northern Netherlands as a barrier. In the new course 'Plastic Soup: Close the Loop', we create an activating hybrid studio in which a multidisciplinary student population is challenged to jointly solve plastic waste-related problems within the Northern Netherlands business community. In doing so, they will apply the designthinking cycle. This innovation will lead to engaged students who are able to collaborate beyond the boundaries of their own discipline and actively learn by working on issues with companies in the professional context. The hybrid (offline-online) learning environment will also minimise travel time between different locations.