Green Engineering[edit | edit source]
Green Engineering is the design, commercialization and use of processes and products that are feasible and economical while:[1]
- Reducing the generation of pollution at the source.
- Minimizing the risk to human health and the environment.
The Twelve Principles of Green Engineering[2][edit | edit source]
1. Inherent Rather Than Circumstantial Designers need to strive to ensure that all materials and energy inputs and outputs are as inherently nonhazardous as possible. 2. Prevention Instead of Treatment It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it is formed. 3. Design for Separation Separation and purification operations should be designed to minimize energy consumption and materials use. 4. Maximize Efficiency Products, processes, and systems should be designed to maximize mass, energy, space, and time efficiency. 5. Output-Pulled Versus Input-Pushed Products, processes, and systems should be "output pulled" rather than "input pushed" through the use of energy and materials. 6. Conserve Complexity Embedded entropy and complexity must be viewed as an investment when making design choices on recycle, reuse, or beneficial disposition. 7. Durability Rather Than Immortality Targeted durability, not immortality, should be a design goal. 8. Meet Need, Minimize Excess Design for unnecessary capacity or capability (e.g., "one size fits all") solutions should be considered a design flaw. 9. Minimize Material Diversity Material diversity in multicomponent products should be minimized to promote disassembly and value retention. 10. Integrate Material and Energy Flows Design of products, processes, and systems must include integration and interconnectivity with available energy and materials flows. 11. Design for Commercial "Afterlife" Products, processes, and systems should be designed for performance in a commercial "afterlife." 12. Renewable Rather Than Depleting Material and energy inputs should be renewable rather than depleting.
