Abstract
Implementing a water-use experiential exercise in business courses reinforces student learning outcomes associated with managing both traditional business wastes and those wastes associated with social or environmental impact and responsibility. In this exercise, students are challenged to reflect on their own sustainability attitudes and behaviors by measuring their wasted water. The exercise is adaptable to include other business learning outcomes and is flexible for a variety of high-level sustainability frameworks. It provides an approachable opportunity to discuss social and environmental waste challenges and supports synergy to discuss multiple sustainability metrics associated with the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals, corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental, social, and governance (ESG), or other frameworks. In addition, students learn about regional and global water challenges and evaluate the impact of water waste for long-term sustainability of scarce resources.
Introduction
This sustainability-focused experiential learning activity supports both the integration of sustainability concepts into business curricula and creates myriad opportunities for scaffolding and connecting other significant business learning outcomes for students. Sustainability awareness and business learning outcomes garner the attention of corporate executives (Bain & Company, 2024) and continue to connect directly to business curricula in the form of corporate social responsibility (CSR) or environmental, social, and governance (ESG). Impactful experiential learning opportunities such as this provide necessary touchpoints for students to learn and reflect on how personal behaviors and attitudes will influence future employers’ sustainability efforts.
This experiential student activity focuses specifically on water as a vitally constrained global resource and increases a student’s awareness of water-use challenges. The activity does not specifically address the water dilemma from a political perspective (see Appendix B). This activity provides a crucial stand-alone sustainability and social impact learning opportunity. The activity also provides a foundation for many other critical global challenges and business learning outcomes, such as related challenges illustrated in Blodgett and Simon (2025), Bendell (2025), and Nuñez et al. (2025).
Various sustainability frameworks could be utilized by business curricula to highlight these important relationships, including the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals (2015) (UN 17 SDGs) or the Seven Revolutions Initiative framework (AASCU, 2012), or others (Holmes, 2025; Meisel & Mirchandani, 2024). Whittingham et al. (2023) suggest that the publication of the UN 17 SDGs in 2015 changed the manner in which sustainability reporting occurs, and possibly also “spurred meaningful, if uneven, change in sustainability efforts reported by leading firms” (p. 58). This exercise is unique in its lean systems thinking focus. Yet, a variety of different student learning outcomes could intersect with this experiential activity. This exercise is most suitable in the management or business education curriculum for undergraduate students. Adaptations for graduate-level students would require additional rigor (e.g., deeper quantitative analysis, a policy research extension, or a CSR reporting component). Some undergraduate-level examples include but are not limited to:
Production and operations management—to align sustainability-related wastes with traditional lean systems wastes or efficiency metrics content
Principles of management—to enhance managerial critical thinking, ethics, contemporary issues, or decision-making curriculum
Organizational behavior—to emphasize resource constraints, human relations, organizational power conflicts, and psychological reactance
Strategic management—to broaden the managerial lens on CSR/ESG and similar organizational goals and objectives
Business ethics—to provide a specific case for balancing business decisions
Corporate communication—to enhance communication of CSR/ESG to organizational stakeholders
Even without a formal social impact or sustainability framework, business faculty could find and share a variety of relevant intersecting topics from current business news, associated with water-use challenges. Recent sustainability examples include news about shifting regional agricultural food production toward edible less water-intensive native species and away from other water-intensive crops (Fordham, 2024), or a discussion about food waste and its critical impact on carbon emissions (Walling, 2024). Both examples provide notable connections to water use and waste, with sustainability and social impact, and other business learning outcomes for students.
Theoretical Foundation
Experiential exercises provide well-established benefits for learning (Kolb, 1984). This water-use exercise requires students to measure a dimension of water waste in their own living environments and then reflect on the results. In addition, the exercise is constructed in a manner that allows other curricular learning outcomes to be reinforced, elevated, or added.
Lean systems concepts and tools associated with waste and cost reduction (Summers, 2011) find synergy with sustainability goals and metrics, particularly when general waste reduction includes additional green waste issues such as water use, energy use, hazardous waste, and solid waste disposal. Specifically, the cost of operations in organizations is positively impacted by green practices (Bergmiller, 2006; Bergmiller & McCright, 2009). Although this synergy seems axiomatic, that waste reduction should drive cost reduction, it is possible that some students may not recognize these relationships from their experiences as customers, or when students consider possible future roles as business professionals.
CSR has been connected to the UN 17 SDGs and the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) by authors such as Bear (2017), where emphasis was placed on the need for students to reflect on the importance of the content (Waddock & Lozano, 2013). As the language of business has shifted or morphed to include ESG as well as CSR, additional authors have also linked the UN 17 SDGs with ESG and Principles for Responsible Investing (Meisel & Mirchandani, 2024). Additional examples of the personalization of sustainability with foundation for business education can be found in Bell (2019), where they aim to change students’ behaviors to achieve a positive, more sophisticated view of sustainability, where both costs and environmental impact can be reduced simultaneously, rather than assuming “weak” or “business-centered” sustainability compliance increases costs. This exercise differs from Bell (2019) and others for the specificity of measured personal water waste, and the short exercise time frame.
Learning Objectives
After completing this exercise, students will be able to:
LO1: Identify regional and global water-use challenges
LO2: Discuss the impact that business decisions have on regional and global challenges
LO3: Examine how lean systems thinking can reduce costly wasted resources
LO4: Develop a self-awareness of water use habits
LO5: Measure individual impact on water waste and its effect on long-term water sustainability
Instructions for the Exercise
Step 1: Pre-Exercise Survey
Students complete a pre-exercise survey (Appendix A) to reflect on their individual opinions and previous exposure to experiential learning exercises, to assess their general knowledge and familiarity with regional and global water waste challenges, and to capture general demographic information. The pre-exercise can be completed in 15 minutes either at the beginning of a class or online outside of class.
Step 2: Introduce Water-Use Background and Lean Systems Thinking
Step 2 of the exercise requires a day of class for faculty to present water-use background and lean systems thinking (75-minute class session or could be split between two class days). In some parts of North America, municipal and city water is more valuable and more expensive than in other regions of the country, and costs vary greatly. Students will be introduced to a short documentary film about water challenges (approximately 30–50 minutes, see Appendix B for resource list) and materials to illustrate conservation efforts and the cost of municipal water. Instructors outside of North America may substitute a documentary specific to their region with relevant water rate data. It is important to note for students that the documentary films discuss some politicized attitudes and challenges about water rights, legal issues about water, climate change, and water use. To guide this discussion, Appendix B outlines example language to share with students.
Next, the class engages in a short introduction or review of lean systems thinking (approximately 30 minutes). When not all undergraduate management curricula require rigorous independent operations management courses or modules, a short introduction to a lean systems waste-reduction mindset for this exercise could either be more intensive or reduced as a refresher. Appendix C provides instructional resources for teaching lean systems content. Given that an important part of lean systems thinking for any organization is the elimination of the eight wastes of lean, such as wasted time, effort, or other resources with financial implications, students discuss how homes and households are mini-organizations, and how most of us strive to save money and other personal resources to the best extent that we can. Students discuss green waste, defined as food waste, water waste, hazardous waste, and energy waste, as some of the opportunities to reduce waste for most individuals and households (Bergmiller, 2006).
Step 3: Explanation of the Assignment and Data Collection
In Step 3, students are introduced to the assignment (see Appendix D for expanded assignment details) and data collection requirements. Each student will collect water-use data in two different ways for 1 week, with a minimum of six experimental observations. First, students will measure the water that “goes down the drain” while waiting for water to warm to an optimal temperature before a bath or shower. Second, students will measure water that “goes down the drain” while getting water to an optimal warm temperature before washing dishes or washing hands.
To accommodate the widest variety of possible students and challenges, learning outcomes could be flexed to emphasize various course or program learning outcomes, e.g., research, critical thinking skills, business math skills, and business communication. For example:
Students could calculate water cost per gallon in the community where they live and research the costs in their own communities.
Students could provide different statistical analyses based on the data collected or calculated costs, per group or per class.
Students could perform additional research on regulations and possible fines in their communities, incentives for water savings devices or usage rules, and related unintended consequences of some water policies.
Students could investigate root causes of real or perceived consumer behaviors associated with water use and water waste, including untoward behaviors by some water customers (psychological reactance to rules and regulations).
Step 4: Evaluate and Discuss Results
After data collection, students are asked to calculate water wasted based on the current residential water rates (see Appendix D for expanded assignment details). Students are divided into teams of three to four students to compare and discuss differences in data and individual water-use habits. As part of this discussion, students will reflect on their pre-exercise answers. Students also are provided with guided questions to discuss their results and relate results to lean systems thinking (see Appendix D).
Classroom Testing
This exercise has been utilized in our own classrooms consistently since 2022 with approximately 200 business students each year. Initially designed for an undergraduate production and operations management course, the exercise also has been adapted and used for online corporate communication courses (see Appendix E for this assignment variation). Various students’ reflections of the activity noted that the experiential exercise increased awareness of their own water consumption, highlighted others’ water waste behaviors, identified changes necessary to their individual water use, and recognized considerations for the larger community. The following past student reflection comments could be shared with students to facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the activity’s broader context:
“[With the assignment], we can pay attention to the current climate change issues and what environmentalists/scientists recommend for the global world at large as it pertains to responsible water consumption.”
“If the community would listen to the research and see the differences in usages and costs per year, they can possibly pinpoint problem areas within their own water system.”
“Doing a project like this allows us to put into perspective what water waste we contribute on a daily basis and allows us to be more mindful of our actions.”
Discussion and Conclusion
Class conversations and project submissions indicate a new appreciation and increased awareness of water challenges, especially for online students who do not reside in drought-prone regions, and from some traditional on-campus students who were not raised in drought-prone communities. Students’ increased self-awareness of their water consumption during the measurement period could serve as motivation for behavior modification and propel a discussion with students about the Hawthorne effect and about the origins of the Hawthorne effect as it relates to organizational behavior (Mayo, 1933; Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939).
Specific business curricula at various schools could adapt the interpretation of social impact or sustainability. Depending on course or program objectives, schools could extend or modify this exercise to encompass additional elements from a comprehensive set of curricular learning outcomes. A discussion of psychological reactance and consumer or employee behaviors could be included in this exercise in the future, as another potential extension to the learning outcomes. A summary of general challenges associated with reactance thoughts and behaviors can be found in Ma et al. (2019) and Rosenberg and Siegel (2025), but a recent conversational example including phosphate detergent bans and consumer behavior can be found in Vedantam (2024).
Footnotes
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Appendix E
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.