Transitions - Sustainable Design: The Science of Sustainability and Green Engineering - page 88

the public health and environmental aspects of any project and must seek ways to
ensure that the structure is part of an environmentally sustainable approach. This
is an important aspect of sustainability, in that it is certainly not deferred to the
“environmental” professions but is truly an overarching mandate for all professions
(including medical, legal, and business-related professionals). That is why envi-
ronmental decisions must incorporate a wide array of perspectives, while being
based on sound science. The first step in this inclusive decision-making process,
then, is to ensure that every stakeholder understands the data and information
gathered when assessing environmental conditions.
With the emergence of a newer, greener era, companies and agencies have been
looking beyond ways to treat pollution to find better processes to prevent envi-
ronmental harm in the first place. In fact, the adjective green has been increasingly
showing up in front of many disciplines (e.g., green chemistry, green engineer-
ing, green architecture), as has the adjective sustainable . Increasingly, companies
have come to recognize that improved efficiencies save time, money, and other
resources in the long run. Hence, companies are thinking systematically about
the entire product stream in numerous ways:
Applying sustainable development concepts, including the framework and
foundations of green design and engineering models
Applying the design process within the context of a sustainable framework,
including considerations of commercial and institutional influences
Considering practical problems and solutions from a comprehensive stand-
point to achieve sustainable products and processes
Characterizing waste streams resulting from designs and increasingly adopt-
ing a “design for disassembly” ethos.
Understanding how first principles of science, including thermodynamics
and mechanics, must be integral to sustainable designs in terms of mass and
energy relationships, including reactors, heat exchangers, and separation
processes
Applying creativity, system integration, and originality in group product
and building design projects
Major incidents and milestones remind us of how delicate and vulnerable
environmental resources can be. They also remind us that, in all engineering
and design, the system is only as robust as its weakest component. Many of
these incidents occurred as a confluence of numerous factors and events. The
retrospective view also gives us information on what may yet occur in the future.
Like many other trends of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,