Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
extracting 34 times more material resources (COM 2011 ). Also during the last
century, materials use increased eightfold and, as a result, Humanity currently uses
almost 60 billion tons (Gt) of materials per year (Krausmann et al. 2009 ). The
global construction industry alone consumes more raw materials (about 3,000 Mt/
year, almost 50 % by weight) than any other economic activity, which emphasizes
its unsustainable character. Also, in the next few years, the construction industry
will keep on growing at a fast pace. China alone will need 40 billion square meters
of combined residential and commercial floor space over the next 20 years—
equivalent to adding one New York City every 2 years (Pacheco-Torgal and Jalali
2011 ). Recent estimates on urban expansion suggests that until 2030 a high prob-
ability exist (over 75 %) that urban land cover will increase by 1.2 million km 2
(Seto et al. 2012 ). This is equivalent to an area about the size of South Africa. The
forecast urban expansion could lead to the loss of up to 40 % of the species and of
88 % of the global primary vegetation land cover had been destroyed in ''biodi-
versity hotspots'' (Pim and Raven 2000 ; Myers et al. 2000 ).
The most important environmental threat associated to materials production is
not so much the depletion of nonrenewable raw materials (Allwood et al. 2011 ),
but instead, the environmental impacts caused by its extraction, namely extensive
deforestation and top-soil loss. In 2000, the mining activity worldwide generated
6,000 Mt of mine wastes to produce just 900 Mt of raw materials (Whitmore
2006 ).
This means an average use of only 0.15 %, resulting in vast quantities of waste,
whose disposal represents an environmental risk in terms of biodiversity conser-
vation, air pollution, and contamination of water reserves. It is worth mention that
around 1.2 billion people live in areas of physical scarcity and 500 million people
are approaching this situation. As a result, since the 1970s there were 30 serious
environmental accidents in mines, 5 of which occurred in Europe (Pacheco-Torgal
and Jalali 2011 ) like for instance the 2010 toxic red mud flood in the town of
Kolontar (Hungary). This is rather disturbing because Europe has high environ-
mental standards which mean that countries in which such high standards do not
exist environmental disasters could happen much more frequently. Since materials
demand will double in the next 40 years, the environmental impacts will therefore
increase in a drastic manner (Allwood et al. 2011 ). Consequently, the World
Business Council for Sustainable Development estimates that by 2050 a 4 to
10-fold increase in resource efficiency will be needed (COM, 571). Alwood et al.
( 2011 ) recognizes that part of the problem is related to the fact that so far
researchers have paid too little attention to the crucial issue of materials efficiency.
A possible explanation for that gap relates to the fact that sustainable development
principles have not yet been apprehended by University curricula. In recent years,
several authors theorized about the way to embed sustainable development in
higher education and several institutions made some efforts on this issue (Lozano
2006 ; Pacheco-Torgal and Jalali 2007 ; Holmberg et al. 2008 ; De Vere et al. 2009 ;
Lozano 2010 ; Waheed et al. 2011 ). Data from a recent survey completed by final
year engineering students in three Irish Higher Education Institutions shows that
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