Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the engineering students' knowledge on this subject is still deficient (Nicolao and
Colon
2012
).
Salcedo-Rahola and Mulder (
2009
) state that ''If engineers are to contribute
truly to sustainable development, then sustainability must become part of their
everyday thinking. This, on the other hand, can only be achieved if sustainable
development becomes an integral part of engineering education programs, not a
mere ''add-on'' to the 'core' parts of the curriculum.'' As a result, the validation of
any discipline in any engineering curriculum must be put to a test in which the one
million dollar question is ''How can your discipline contribute to sustainable
development?'' (Salcedo-Rahola and Mulder
2009
). A more holistic approach is
defended by Al-Rawahy (
2013
) who state that sustainable development has con-
centrated mainly on physical and tangible issues and assets and that that the most
pressing ingredient and the most scarce resource facing the sustainability concept
is the ethical and moral values that universities need to proactively and aggres-
sively ''infuse'' into their respective curricula. This position was already defended
by other authors. According to Dator (
2005
) ''engineering is not more important
than ethics… and science is not more important than policy and law'' therefore a
new kind of engineering education is therefore needed to address sustainable
development principles. Grasso et al. (
2010
) mention that ''a new kind of engineer
is needed, one who can think broadly across disciplines and consider the human
dimensions that are at the heart of every design challenge''. This is especially
important in the context of climate change, which raises many questions with
ethical dimensions rooted in the human condition (Willis
2012
; Kaklauskas et al.
2013
).
1.2 Civil Engineering: The Rebirth of an Obsolete
Curriculum Through Biotechnologies and Biomimetics
Recent studies show that students of civil and environmental engineering were
reluctant to have sustainability integrated sustainability into existing classes
(Watson et al.
2013
). One of the latest trends concerning the update of civil
engineering towards sustainable development is related to the inclusion of life-
cycle assessment (LCA) skills in the education curriculum (Glass et al.
2013
).
Unfortunately, since almost all construction products are not environmentally
friendly, this is the same as choosing between the less of two evils. Another
drawback of LCA is the fact that it does not take into account the possible future
environmental disasters associated with the extraction of raw materials. This
means that, for instance, the LCA of the aluminum produced by the Magyar
Aluminum factory, the one responsible for the toxic red mud flood in the town of
Kolontar (Hungary), should account for this environmental disaster. Only then
construction products will be associated with their true environmental impact.
Since that it is almost impossible to put in practice this means that new and truly
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