1 Introduction to Green Engineering Concepts

Trulli — “Green Engineering” is the design of materials, processes, systems, and devices with the objective of minimizing overall environmental impact over the entire product/project life cycle while meeting other required performance, economic, political, and societal constraints. The Triple Bottom Line, developed in 1994 (Elkington (1994)), was used in industry to include environmental considerations. Image attribution: “Triple bottom line” by Innov8social is licensed under CC BY 2.0..

This unit provides an overview of the overarching concepts which apply to all topics in this introductory Green Engineering textbook and course. The concepts of systems, energy/materials flows and balances, environmental impacts, the Triple Bottom Line, natural capitalism, ecosystems service, and life cycle thinking will be introduced here and applied throughout the rest of the course. You should be actively trying to make connections between these fundamental concepts and the topics in the following chapters.

References

Elkington, John. 1994. “Towards the Sustainable Corporation: Win-Win-Win Business Strategies for Sustainable Development.” California Management Review 36 (2): 90–100. https://doi.org/10.2307/41165746.