Engineers Play a Key Role in Manufacturing

Engineers play a key role in global sustainable manufacturing and development by designing production systems for materials, minerals, chemicals, energy, water, electricity generation and distribution, transportation, buildings and other structures, and consumer products (see Appendix J). These designs have impact on the environment, economics, and societal benefits at spatial scale that vary from local to global and temporal scales that vary from minutes to decades. As engineers create designs, they do not only evaluate their designs at multiple spatial and temporal scales, they also embed their designs in complex systems.

The field of transportation provides an illustration of the multiple layers of systems in which engineers create designs. Among the most visible products designed by engineers are automobiles. Engineers design engines, and improvements to the design of a fossil‐fuel‐powered engine for an automobile can increase fuel efficiency and reduce environmental impacts of emissions associated with burning fuels, while simultaneously reducing the cost of operating the vehicle. The size, power, and fuel efficiency of the engine must be balanced with the weight of the vehicle system. Further reductions in emissions and operating costs might be possible by lowering the weight of the vehicle. The use of materials and fuels by automobiles are embedded in complex fuel and material supply systems. Developing systems to recycle the materials that make up the automobile at the end of its useful life might improve the environmental and economic performance of global materials flows. Use of alternative power sources, such as electricity or biofuels can impact flows of fuels, which, in turn, might impact global flows of materials such as water. Finally, the design of cities that reduce the need for personal transportation could dramatically reduce the environmental impacts of transportation systems and would also transform social structures.

BOX 10.1 CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY

The precise meaning of the term “corporate sustainability” is much disputed. For some, a company that is truly pursuing sustainable practices must be phasing out its use of substances that are systematically at odds with a sustainable world, while measuring what share of the world’s limited regenerative capacity is occupied by its use of renewable resources. Similar to this is the view that corporate sustainability means establishing boundary conditions, limits, metabolic ratios, and footprints.¹ Others intellectually tied to the social auditing movement, assign more weight to the processes that lead to sustainable practices (as distinct from the results of those practices). They see the involvement of stakeholders – and indicators defined by those stakeholders – as a precondition for truly sustainable corporate activities. Still others, led by the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, define sustainability largely in terms of eco‐efficiency, i.e. as producing goods and services of greater and greater value relative to the burden they impose on the environment. Finally, some commentators view corporate sustainability as an oxymoron. That is, they see today’s global corporations – which measure their success primarily in terms of short‐term increases in shareholder value and which make few commitments to their communities or workers – as inherently at odds with the intergenerational and social equity aspects of sustainability.

Source: From White (1999).

¹ Boundary conditions, limits, and metabolic ratios refer to the assimilative capacity of air, water, and land relative to the resource use and wastes associated with a firm’s products and services.