Part A)
In a world where heroes were born out of necessity, the Fusion Four found themselves united for the first time during an interactive workshop session, their individual emblems burning brightly on their outfits. It was a historic moment as they entered the spotlight, announcing their rise to prominence as an elite group.
Their heroic mission began with a tip from their trusted allies, Steven McGreevy and Anete Veidemane. These two had obtained critical intel about a rising threat emerging from the shadows: Fast Fashion! The mere mention of this evil made them tremble, yet they realized they had to work together to combat this menace.
They huddled together, realizing that they needed to gather intelligence before fighting their foe. Fast Fashion was far more than merely a villain; it wreaked havoc not only on people but also on the environment. As they split, each member of the Fusion Four set out on a mission to find out everything they could about their enemy.
They revealed their findings after regrouping, their reactions a mix of shock and anxiety. It was clear that Fast Fashion's reach was extensive, with disastrous effects for both humans and the environment. The Four understood they had to put an end to this wickedness, and they stood united, ready to defend the people and the environment from Fast Fashion's grasp.
During their prolonged discussion, the Fusion Four came to a firm conclusion: Fast Fashion was a behemoth with several characteristics that required a complete approach to elimination. The nefarious effect of Fast Fashion reached far and wide, entangling consumers, transportation networks, and clothing producers alike.
As the Four's thoughts progressed, they discovered a common thread: guilt. Guilt, they realized, showed itself in a variety of ways among consumers. Some felt sorrow for indirectly supporting sweatshops in developing countries, where workers toiled in poor conditions with neither decent wages or occupational safety (Snyder, 2010). Conscientious customers' morals could be impacted greatly by this terrible part of the fashion industry.
However, the guilt went beyond human exploitation and cast a shadow on the ecosystem as well. The global shipping of clothing contributed an astounding quantity of CO2 emissions, adding to the climate catastrophe. Not to mention the impending piles of abandoned items in landfills or huge amounts of water used in the production process, a tribute to Fast Fashion's disposable character (Niinimäki et al., 2020). These environmental transgressions portrayed a grim image.
Surprisingly, Fast Fashion found an effective ally in the form of social media. Micro-trends and continually altering beauty norms have emerged as a result of the rise of social influencers, propelling the unrelenting speed of Fast Fashion's ever-changing landscape.
You're curious as to how the Fusion Four will deal with this behemoth of an opponent? Then stay tuned and continue reading! More information about Challenge Based Learning and the Four's Big Idea is given below.

Niinimäki, K., Peters, G., Dahlbo, H., Perry, P., Rissanen, T., & Gwilt, A. (2020). The
environmental price of fast fashion. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 1(4), 189–
200. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-020-0039-9

Snyder, J. (2010). Exploitation and sweatshop labor: Perspectives and issues. Business Ethics Quarterly, 20(2), 187–213. https://doi.org/10.5840/beq201020215

Part B)
Challenge based learning is a useful tool or framework to work on when confronting big societal problems such as global warming. This framework allows us to explore a current challenge with a multidisciplinary group and mixed varieties of experience varying from students who are only starting to research, professors who are experts in the field and finally the stakeholders who are engaging with the problem more intensely on a day to day basis. It is all inclusive, meaning that even stakeholders are joining together with students and teachers to tackle these problems together, which makes it a really unique way of addressing societal problems.
In a normal college class, there is barely any communication or dialogue with stakeholders. Students have difficulties reaching out to stakeholders, but in this CBL course, the stakeholders are already set up with the students. The group consists of a variety of disciplines namely, Communication Science, Psychology and Public Administration. Together with these wide varieties of disciplines, there are bound to be different perspectives and these different perspectives can help better understand the problem. Also there is much freedom and space allotted for students, more ownership and responsibility for the problem.
Compared to normal ways of learning that occur in the academic field, it is not encouraged to fail, whereas Challenge Based Learning encourages failures and insists on learning from them. Each week the groups publish the progress of their work to actively reflect on the contents, this allows a deeper learning. The CBL method offers a 3-step procedure to engage, investigate, and Act. As of now, our group just started the initial process of the CBL, to engage. The first week allows students to choose a broader topic and start brainstorming on a big idea. The brainstorming phase allows us to familiarize with the problem. We get a feel for how our learning process will take place. Next week we will connect the dots, by using the big idea we created in the beginning, to make an essential question. As we face more and more global crises, it is crucial to use tools that allow us to learn about a problem and provide useful input into solutions. We have chosen fast fashion, a phenomenon that involves unsustainable practices of clothes, whether it's a habit of using clothes and throwing them away, or sorting the massive waste problems that occur in the world. So as stated before, there are multiple disciplinary students who are partaking, overall, this will provide interesting and diverse solutions to the problem.
So, by utilizing the CBL method, we as a team are better equipped to understand the global challenges. Since these complex tasks require more concentrated and well thought approaches that are organized and simple to follow. We are in the beginning process of the CBL, as we delve deep into the process, we will have a deeper understanding of CBL and utilize it to the best extent we can. For now, familiarizing ourselves and the initiation of CBL is most crucial.

Part C)
For their big idea, the Fusion Four decided to tackle the matter of recycling and purchasing second-hand clothing. As Maiti (2023) argues, 85% of materials used for the fast fashion industry are wasted each year without further purpose. Further, it has to account for 10% of all carbon released into the atmosphere and 35% of the microplastics polluting our oceans. Compared to purchasing behavior only 20 years ago, consumption of clothing items has gone up by a rocketing 400%. Living up to its name, fast fashion clothing items have a relatively short life span (Maiti, 2023). Not only production is a fast process, but consumers that often follow fast-changing trends, are likely to get rid of the clothing for no other reason than that it is no longer in style, leading to a huge contribution of waste since most clothing then ends up in landfills.
If the environmental impact of the fast fashion industry does not make you want to rip out your hair just yet, take a look at the extremely unethical working conditions that the employees of sweatshops have to endure every day and how casually children are often employed at these workplaces and you will probably want to consider your next purchase twice (Maiti, 2023). Chapter 4.19 up to 4.22 of the Climate Book initiated by none other than Greta Thunberg focus specifically on consumerism and are helpful to get an insight into fast fashion and the impact that the industry has on the environment. By reading chapter 1.2, you understand how carbon dioxide works and no longer have to pretend to understand what those 10% really do to the atmosphere. Microplastic is further explained in chapter 2.13 and, while not focusing specifically on fast fashion, chapter 4.16 deals with the influence of transport, another factor that the industry relies on to get their products from the producer to the consumer.

Cycling back to the beginning of the text, recycling does not only entail the sustainable disposal of old clothing, but also giving them a new life by letting your creativity flow and turning them into something different, something new. This way, material is not wasted but used for another purpose. Offering a more sustainable way of acquiring clothing, second-hand shopping is already becoming more popular and for good reasons. Clothing that is still fine for wear is able to find a new home and does not end up on landfills where it gets burned, contributing to the already high carbon emissions. While the clothing is often not yet made from sustainable materials, second-hand shopping and recycling of already existing materials contributes immensely to the problem of waste that the fast fashion industry has created and prevents clothing that was created under immense human and environmental efforts to go to waste. Having found some of their favorite pieces in second-hand stores themselves, the Fusion Four wish to utilize the use of existing items and contribute to saving the earth by focusing on this area.

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