Week 5 Lab: Source Critique Lab

Apply Monday's read-the-source-against-its-interest test to a sustainability claim on your own week 1 package

22 March 2027

Before the lab#

Bring back your week 1 package, and look for any sustainability-adjacent text or symbol on it before the lab starts: a recycling triangle, a material code, a certification mark, a line of marketing copy about the environment.

In the lab#

• Find the claim — if your package has no such claim, borrow a classmate’s, or use whichever week 1 case (Apple, lululemon, OnTheList) is closest to something you’ve seen elsewhere.
• Find the publisher — is the claim made by the brand itself, a third-party certifier, an industry body, or a government scheme? Look it up if you don’t already know.
• Apply the test — using Monday’s Fibre Box Association example as a template, separate two questions: is the underlying methodology or standard sound, and does the publisher have a direct interest in you believing the comparison it implies? A claim can pass one test and fail the other.
• Name the gap — write one sentence on what information you’d need (an independent audit, a competing material’s own LCA, the raw study itself) to actually check the claim rather than just trust or distrust it on reputation.

Afterwards#

Keep your claim and your one-sentence gap. Week 6 asks you to place your week 1 case study’s sustainability posture, if it has one, against the other four logics you now have numbers for.