Sustainability by Design: How Northeastern

Is Reshaping Its Engineering Projects

By Ryan Treible with Sustainability

On a spring afternoon, a group of first-year engineering students gathered inside Northeastern’s Innovation and Design Makerspace. Except, they weren’t building; they were breaking things down. Cardboard was pulled apart, piles of plastic were sorted, and used components were weighed and recorded.

It was all part of what organizers called a “Lifecycle Party,” a new end-of-semester tradition for students in Cornerstone of Engineering, Northeastern’s project-based introductory course. Teams took apart their final builds and made sure materials ended up where they belonged: back on the shelf, in the recycling, or set aside for future reuse. 

“The attendance at the event was really good,” said Nicole Batrouny, a teaching professor in the First-Year Engineering Program. “It got a lot of students to ask questions and begin to change their own habits.” 

That kind of thinking was the goal. Batrouny and her colleagues received a $5,000 grant from Northeastern Sustainability, one of ten for the fall 2024 cycle of their Grant Program, to build new reuse and recycling systems in the First-Year Engineering Learning and Innovation Center (FYELIC), the program’s dedicated makerspace. Their pitch focused on making sustainability a core part of the first-year experience, giving students the tools and mindset to consider the environmental impact of their designs from the beginning. 

In practice though, that meant taking a hard look at where things were falling short. As is, projects were getting thrown away, tools were going missing, and materials that could’ve been reused were ending up in the trash. “It’s hard,” Batrouny said. “You’re trying to support hands-on learning, which is great. But at the same time, that learning has a footprint.” 

With the funding in place, the team introduced more structured sorting systems, repurposed shelving units to house leftover parts, and installed new signage to make it easier for students to tell what could be recycled or reused. As part of the grant, Batrouny also hired a student worker, known as the “Green Vest,” to help keep the system running, answer student questions, and maintain order during the busiest times of year. These may not sound like big changes, but together they’ve helped create a shift in how students think about their materials.  

“We wanted to build a culture where students saw every material as something with a backstory and a future,” Batrouny said. “Something that didn’t just appear for a project and disappear once it was over.” 

The Makerspace team in EXP had already been working in that direction. “We try to encourage students to use the consumables that we stock,” said Aya Aragon, one of the space’s full-time staff. “We’re a space that’s very built on rapid prototyping, which is great, but that leads to a lot of waste.”

Class projects, especially in early-stage engineering, generate a huge amount of material, often constructed quickly, then discarded just as fast. “We have bins upon bins of just old, essentially garbage,” Aragon said. “A lot of it comes from those big, team-based assignments.” 

Some materials are easier to handle than others. Scraps of fabric are saved and reused regularly. There are dedicated bins for wood, metal, cardboard, and paper. But 3D printer filament, one of the most commonly used materials in both FYELIC and the Innovation and Design Makerspace, posed a larger problem. 

That’s where a new partnership with Complete Recycling Solutions (C.R.S.) came in. 

“We talked about the 3D printer filament, and C.R.S. expressed interest in it,” said Sue Higgins, Northeastern’s Director of Materials and Recycling. “They didn’t have a formal program for the filament, so we ended up creating something new.” 

Northeastern distributed collection drums to the makerspaces to capture unused or discarded filament, including misprints, tangled spools, and off-spec parts. The first batch was sent out in April. Whether the program continues will depend on how much material is collected and whether it can be processed cost-effectively. 

“It’s recyclable,” Higgins said. “But we have to observe the volume and see what they might be able to do with it. If it’s just a couple drums a year, that might not be enough to build a full program. But if it can grow, maybe other universities can join in.” 

A bigger hurdle, she added, is contamination. Many printed parts are integrated with wood, electronics, or adhesives. That could make full disassembly necessary before the material can be recycled. “It’s all really interesting,” she said. “We don’t know what the end process will look like, but it’s exciting to be figuring that out.” 

The long-term goal, for everyone involved, is to shift not just behavior but mindset. Batrouny hopes that experiences like the Lifecycle Party stick with students and inform the way they design in the future. “Hopefully that’s the real kernel students can take forward,” she said. “That you are responsible for the things you create. And they have an impact.” 

Written by Ryan Treible, June 23rd, 2025