SEMINAR REPORT ON:

SUSTAINABILITY ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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DESCRIPTION

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Introduction

Sustainable Engineering

Uses of Sustainable Engineering

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Advances in Sustainable Engineering and

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Technology
The Future of Sustainable Engineering and

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Technology
References

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1. INTRODUCTION

With a population slated to hit nine billion people by the year 2050, only 38 years till
all the oil in the earth is consumed and around 17,000 people dying every day due to
hunger while one third of all the food produced in the world is wasted ever year Sustainability is the bridge which connects the gaps in the systems of the world.
From engineering and logistical problems to being able to provide solutions for all
the peoples of the world and the future generations too.
Respecting the adage, We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it
from our children sustainability is the way to move forward.
1.1 What is Sustainability?
The

United

States

Environmental

Protection

Agency

(US

EPA)

defines

Sustainability as: Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we

need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our
natural environment. Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which
humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social,
economic and other requirements of present and future generations.
Sustainability is important to making sure that we have and will continue to have, the
water, materials, and resources to protect human health and our environment.
The simplest and most fundamental ways of defining sustainability are: the ability to
sustain, or the capacity to endure. (SustainAbility, sustainability.com)

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1.2 The Need for Sustainability

With burgeoning global population and the ensuing scarcity of resources,
sustainability is becoming essential in all aspects of our daily lives. From the ways
we manufacture, build and create, to the ways in which we consume and produce
waste. Without sustainability, the planet we live on will soon be unable to support us.
If usage of current resources such as water, soil, forests and coal or oil continues at
the same rate as it does now, soon we will be left bereft of actual usable resources.
Future generations will have to resort to desalinating their water, or living in
perpetual scarcity, the carbon di oxide emissions will reach immitigable levels and
even food scarcity will result in manifold problems.
Life, as we know it, will soon come to an end. Freshwater dependent life will soon
become extinct, as will life forms in arctic and subarctic zones. Deforestation will
result in, and is resulting in mass extinction of a number of animals, birds and
reptiles. Experts calculate that 0.01-0.1% of species become extinct every year, by
conservative estimates that amounts to 200 to 2,000 species wiped out annually.
The major push behind getting sustainability on to the ground is due to the future
and the question over whether everything we have now will remain the same then.
1.3 The Types of Sustainability
There are four basic types of sustainability we encounter daily. Namely:
human,

economic,

social,

and

environmental.
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Humans are considered individual entities whose worths are determined by their
health, skills, knowledge, education, and leadership. Humans in turn exist within the
realm of the economy. And the economy within the society, which is extant in the
environment. By saving one the chain reaction begins in saving the others.
A lot of different entities work to create and foster sustainability within these
categories, for instance the UN, the EPA and the Earth Institute at Columbia
University work towards spreading sustainable practices in society, the environment
and the technological fields respectively.
1.4 A World Without Sustainability
A world in which we have run out of all types of resources is the first which comes to
mind but that is nothing but the beginning. A person might conceive of a future in
which the human race has learned to harness renewable sources of energy for their
every need but the truth is rather starker than that. Although we are slowly moving
towards harnessing these seemingly endless resources such as wind, the tides and
solar energy, we still consume more water, coal, gas, oil, trees, soil and animals than
we can replenish back into the environment.
Scientists estimate that at our current rate we will require 2 planets to fully sustain
us, and if all humans behaved like the developed nations then that figure becomes
4.

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2. SUSTAINABILITY ENGINEERING

The core concepts of sustainability when integrated with engineering disciplines

such as manufacturing, mechanical engineering, civil and structural engineering,
architecture and any other form of science wherein we use energy, resources and
raw materials to create, convert or produce outputs is labelled as sustainable
engineering.
2.1 What is Sustainability Engineering
UNESCO defines it as: Sustainable engineering is the process of using resources in
a way that does not compromise the environment or deplete the materials for future
generations. Sustainable engineering requires an interdisciplinary approach in all
aspects of engineering and all engineering fields should incorporate sustainability
into their practice in order to improve the quality of life for all.
Sustainable Engineering considers the system in which the object/ service/ output
being developed will be used, ie, it keeps the environment and other systems
holistically in mind. It Integrates technical and nontechnical issues, acknowledging
the need for engineers to interact with experts in other disciplinesfrom socioeconomic to political and research based sciences allrelated to the problems
encountered. It strives to solve problems for the indefinite future (for ever) while
simultaneously considering the global context (planet).

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There are 12 principles which have been defined keeping green engineering in mind
(Anastas and Zimmerman, 2003), they are:
1. Apply green chemistry
2. Prevent rather than treat consequences
3. Design for separation
4. Maximize mass, energy, space and time efficiency
5. Out-pulled rather than input-pushed
6. View complexity as an investment rather than a complication
7. Durability rather than obsolescence
8. Meet need without excess
9. Minimize material diversity
10. Integrate local material and energy flows
11. Design for commercial after-life
12. Renewable and readily available.
2.2 How to Measure and Implement Sustainability
Some tools are available to determine the sustainability impact of a building, product
or output, they are:

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2.2.1 Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs): These mimic nature by gathering industrial

activities in one location to promote interactions and close-loop practices, like in
natural ecosystems. Businesses, companies, factories and the local community
cooperate in order to reduce waste and efficiently share resources. Very rigorous
systems design is required. The best example is the Kalundborg symbiotic network
in Denmark, which has a coal fired thermal power plant, 3500 local homes, a fish
farm, fertilizer factory, pharmaceutical manufacturer, and a wallboard manufacturer.
All the products are cycled in a closed loop from one point to another.

Fig 1: Flow resources in the integrated biosystem of Montford Boys Town in Suva,
Fiji

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2.2.2 Pollution Prevention (P2): Pollution prevention (P2) is any practice that
reduces, eliminates, or prevents pollution at its source, also known as "source
reduction." Source reduction is fundamentally different and more desirable than
recycling, treatment and disposal.
2.2.3 Design for Environment (DfE): Design for the Environment Program (DfE) is a
United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) program, created in 1992,
that works to prevent pollution, and the risk pollution presents to humans and the
environment. Considerations are: Less material, Less material variety, Recycled
materials, Recyclable materials, Ease of disassembly, Less energy consumption,
Longevity, Modularity.
2.2.4 Design for Manufacturing (DFM) and design for assembly (DFA) are the
integration of product design and process planning into one common activity. The
goal is to design a product that is easily and economically manufactured. Reducing
material and cost overheads and unnecessary products are important parts of
DFMA.
2.2.5 Life-cycle Assessment (LCA): LCA is a technique to assess the environmental
aspects and potential impacts associated with a product, process, or service, by:
Compiling an inventory of relevant energy and material inputs and environmental
releases. Evaluating the potential environmental impacts associated with identified
inputs and releases. It considers the entire product cycle from cradle to grave
(procurement of raw materials, manufacture, distribution, use and disposal)

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One especially useful impact factor is known as Okala. Okala Impact Factors are a
designer-friendly form of LCA developed with robust science. They were designed
for quick back of an envelope decision-making, so that an understanding of
ecological impacts can be factored into design decisions as early as the
conceptualiisation phase. Okala Impact Factors have been calculated for more than
500 materials and processes employed in hard products, architecture, soft goods
and electronic systems. They include a wide range of transportation, energy use,
incineration and landfill processes, which allow modeling of environmental
performance over the entire life cycle. It is a designer friendly form of LCA

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Fig 2: Okala Impact factors calculated for a

subassembly using either steel leg or aluminium legs. A lower impact factor is a
better impact factor
2.2.6 Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED): This measure is
specifically for buildings. Developed by the US EPA it rates new buildings on the
performance in five key areas: water saving, energy efficiency, materials selection,
and indoor environmental quality.

3. USES OF SUSTAINABLE ENGINEERING

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Sustainability is a discipline spanning across more than just one field of engineering.
It finds applications in the energy sector, manufacturing, agriculture, civil, and other
industries.
3.1 How Companies and Businesses are Using Sustainability Engineering
Commercially
The large company 3M uses sustainability to such an extent that it has been ten
years running, winning the Energy Star award from the US EPA and been listed on
the

Dow

Jones

Sustainability

index

since

its

inception

in

1999.

Their scour pads are greener and cleaner as 50% of the fibres used in the cleaning
pad are from the agave plant, which is waste produce in the agave nectar industry
as well as a cleaner alternative to synthetic fibres generally utilized in such cleaning
pads.
3Ms award-winning two-phase immersion technology helps keep hardware cool
through the natural process of evaporation. Using 3M Novec Engineered Fluids, the
technology means less energy used to cool hardware (95% less, to be exact), and
less space to hold components (only one-tenth of what was used before). Novec
fluids are also non-ozone depleting and have low global warming potentials.
Their adhesives, sealants and void fillers eliminate the need for heavier rivets and
metallic bonds in airplanes to make them much lighter and able to carry more fuel,
making the lighter airplanes more fuel efficient by dropping a few thousand pounds.
CEO and president of LEGO group Jrgen Vig Knudstorp has promised in a press
conference to move to new bio based materials instead of petrochemical based
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plastics which make the bulk of its bricks now. Their goal is to find new, better and
more sustainable alternatives to existing materials by investing USD 150 million into
the initiative, by far one of the largest single amounts pledged to finding more
sustainable alternatives. For a company which manufactures more than two
thousand elements, or bricks, every second, this is a large commitment, and step in
the right direction. Not only that, they are also committed to a zero waste policy and
a shift toward using 100% renewable energy by the year 2020.
Quite like the company Hewlett-Packard, in their Roseville plant, California USA (9,000 employees) is diverting 92-95% of its solid waste; saving almost a million
dollars a year in avoided waste disposal costs ($870,564 in 1998). HP recycles
cardboard, metal, foam, plastic peanuts, low density polyethylene plastics (LDPE),
Instapak, polystyrene plastics, and reuses and recycles pallets with an almost 100%
Zero Waste manufacturing facility.
Unilever, one of the largest consumer goods producing brands in the world, came up
with the concept of Eco Packs small bags/pouches of plastic which you can see in
the market aisles in India too. Which utilize upto 70% less plastic than traditional
pouches, bags or boxes and greenhouse gases by 50-85% per consumer use.
Introduced in developing countries as either refill or standalone packs, these have
had such a positive response that Unilever now plans to introduce them in Europe
too. In China alone, eco-packs for Omo laundry detergent, Comfort fabric
conditioners and Lux body wash, since their release, have saved around 2.5 million
and 940 tonnes of plastic the weight of 25 Boeing 737s.

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4. ADVANCES IN THE FIELD OF SUSTAINABLE ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

With greater awareness regarding the availability of resources and the production of
large amounts of waste, scientists, researchers and engineers are looking to
maximize dwindling resources and conceptualizing new processes and algorithms
for implementation. Some of the most popular fields of research within Sustainable
Engineering are:
In the production and manufacturing sectors, as: End of life management for hybrid
and electric cars and vehicles. As these cars gain a higher market share year on
year, which itself is a great example of sustainability in engineering as it helps
conserve dwindling oil and gas reserves, it is becoming a challenge to completely
recycle the components which make up these type of cars as opposed to regular
cars where a large percent of the weight is in metallic body components. The EU
regulations state at least 95% of the mass must be recycled by 2015 but in HEVs
(Hybrid/Electric Vehicles) a larger proportion of precious metals and special
components in circuitry and electric components. Further research is being done in
these fields to optimize recycling.
Modelling and Reduction of Water Usage in Manufacturing: The demand for
freshwater in the industrial sector is constantly increasing and is expected to double
by 2030. Ways to improve their water efficiency and reduce their manufacturing
water usage must be found as freshwater scarcity is a large threat. This research
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goes beyond existing water modelling methodologies to develop a proactive

approach to water reduction whereby water usage can be modelled at production
process level in order to evaluate the productivity of water usage, and to identify the
water hotspots in a manufacturing system. This approach facilitates what-if
scenario planning using simulation techniques and provides decision support for
evaluation of proposed water reduction strategies.
Waste Energy Recovery within Manufacturing: Energy demand is expected to
continue to increase over the coming decades, and it is predicted that global
demand will be over 50% above current levels by 2030. Despite the growth in lowcarbon sources of energy, fossil fuels remain dominant and thus, to secure future
energy supply, there has been a large focus on research into alternative solutions.
This research has centred around two options of increased renewable energy
supply, and reduced overall energy consumption. Progress in renewable energy
technologies however has been relatively slow and costly, therefore, within the latter
approach there can be three options for moving forwards: reducing scale of
production activities, improving energy efficiencies processes, and recovery/reusing
waste energy. In this context, this research aims to gain an understanding of the
availability of waste energy from manufacturing processes and to develop a model
based decision support tool to enable manufacturers to implement the most
appropriate energy recovery strategies and technologies.
Material Efficient Manufacturing: There is a growing realisation that the current trend
of increasing material consumption within our finite global system is unsustainable.
The economic resilience of manufacturing in the future will rely on actions being
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taken now to reduce both the rate of consumption and the environmental impacts
associated with material use. For example, in the case of consumer goods it is
estimated that on average materials account for 50% of the production cost.
Therefore, the efficiency of materials to manufacturing is paramount. The main
objective of this research therefore is to improve manufacturing productivity, whilst
reducing raw material consumption to increase the resilience of the manufacturing
industry worldwide. Towards this goal, this research aims to develop tools for
monitoring and modelling material flow within a factory in order to improve
understanding and decision making, and will also explore new technologies to aid in
material efficiency during manufacture.
Eco-Intelligent Manufacturing: Current manufacturing management systems and
related decision making models are optimised for cost effectiveness, time efficiency
(output) and quality control. These utilise a complex network of knowledge and
information systems to enable manufacturers to remain competitive by making
informed short-term decisions, and by generating forecasts for longer time scales.
However at present, environmental impacts of such manufacturing decisions are
often a secondary consideration, and are not included in existing manufacturing
systems. This research aims to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing
companies through better informed decision making, reducing the need for heavy
investment. Hence, industry-relevant methods and tools are being developed within
this research to enable the inclusion of environmental considerations within
manufacturing planning, control and management over short, medium and long
timescales.
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5. THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

5.1 Future Trends in Sustainability Engineering

This is one of the most rapidly increasing sectors in engineering. From affordable
wind turbines and solar power which can even be mounted on house roofs, making
sustainable, renewable energy a foreseeable commonplace technology, it is also
being taught in colleges and universities to future scientists and professionals so
they can make an impact in their respective fields. The Earth Institute founded at
Columbia University in New York by Jeffrey Sachs being one of the foremost such
institutions, offering an MS in Sustainability Management.
In India too, in the states of Andhra Pradesh (with the help of the Federal Ministry for
the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Germany) and Gujarat,
eco industrial parks are in the pipeline where there will be co-operation between
businesses and communities and zero waste and pollution.
UNESCO Engineering Initiative, at the Rio +20 conference in 2012, began
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which build upon the achievements of the
Millenium Development Goals. Sustainable development goals that build on the
successes of the Millennium Development Goals, and that apply to all countries, can
provide a tremendous boost to efforts to implement sustainable development and
help us address issues ranging from reducing poverty and creating jobs to the

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pressing issues of meeting economic, social and environmental aspirations of all

people. Engineers and scientists will play a leading role in the development of
sustainability across all platforms and nationalities. This is a major mandate of the
UNESCO Engineering Initiative and time will tell how successful the push for
sustainability will be throughout the world.

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6. REFERENCES

1. United States Environmental Protection Agency, US EPA,

http://www.epa.gov/sustainability/basicinfo.htm
2. World Proved Reserves of Oil and Natural Gas, Most Recent Estimates Energy Information Administration (EIA) - Data from BP Statistical Review, Oil
& Gas Journal, World Oil, BP Statistical Review, CEDIGAZ, and Oil & Gas
Journal.
3. World Environment Day - Food Waste Facts UNEP,
www.unep.org/wed/2013/quickfacts/
4. The Global Footprint Network, Earth Overshoot Day Report, 2013
5. UNESCO Natural Sciences, UNESCO Engineering Initiative,
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/sciencetechnology/engineering/sustainable-engineering/
6. The 12 Principles of Green Engineering, Anastas & Zimmerman,
Environmental Science & Technology, 1 March 2003
7. Kalundborg Municipality. "Kalundborg Symbiosis". Denmark. 2013
8. UT Austin, Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering,
http://www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/hart/333T/documents/SustainableEngineering.
pdf
9. US EPA, P2, Pollution Prevention, Design for Environment,
http://www2.epa.gov/p2, http://www2.epa.gov/dfe
10. 3M, Sustainability Report, 2014, http://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/sustainabilityus/
11. Lego, http://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/responsibility/environment/goals,
https://education.lego.com/fr-fr/about-us/lego-education-worldwide/makinglego-bricks

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12. Grass Roots Recycling Network, 2013

http://archive.grrn.org/zerowaste/articles/companies_zw.html
13. Unilever Sustainable Living Plan 2014: Scaling for Impact Worldwide,
https://www.unilever.com/Images/uslp-Unilever-Sustainable-Living-PlanScaling-for-Impact-Summary-of-progress-2014_tcm244-424809.pdf
14. The Earth Institute, Columbia University, www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu
15. GIZ, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and
Nuclear Safety, Germany, https://www.giz.de/en/downloads/giz2012-ecoindustrial-parks-andhra-pradesh-india-en.pdf

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