This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
"an economic state where the demands placed upon the environment by people and commerce can be met without reducing the capacity of the environment to provide for future generations.....your business must deliver clothing, objects, food or services to the customer in a way that reduces consumption, energy use, distribution costs, economic concentration,soil erosion, atmospheric pollution, and other forms of environmental damage. Leave the world better than you found it."
From Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce, Collins, 1993, p. 139.
Then…what does sustainable require?If you are presently at a sustainable state…then meet the demands of today without compromising our ability to meet the demands ofthe future. This is a net zero impact.
If you are NOT presently at a sustainable state…then meet the demands of today without compromising our ability to meet the demands ofthe future by reducing the environmental load/unit of commerce to offset any increase in unit production so as to achieve a sustainable state overtime.
That is, in the words of Hawken, your business must deliver clothing, objects, food or services to the customer in a way that reduces consumption, energy use, distribution costs, economic concentration,soil erosion, atmospheric pollution, and other forms of environmental damage at a rate greater than the normal growth in consumption would require. Business must have a “net positive impact.”
Closed Loop Manufacturing: Renewing Functions while Circulating Material
Ref: S. Takata, et al, “Maintenance: Changing Role in Life Cycle Management,” Annals CIRP, 53, 2, 2004, 643-655
Source: T. Tani, “Product Development and Recycle System for Closed Substance Cycle Society,” Proc. Environmentally Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing, 1999, 294-299.
Closed Loop Manufacturing: Renewing Functions while Circulating Material
Source: S. Takata, et al, “Maintenance: Changing Role in Life Cycle Management,” Annals CIRP, 53, 2, 2004, 643-655
• Each orbit in the figure corresponds to a life cycle option, such as prolonged use by means maintenance, product reuse, part reuse,recycling, and energy recovery.
• To realize “closed-loop manufacturing” the product life cycle should be managed by selecting proper life cycle options.
• In selecting life cycle options, need to consider the environmentalperformance or “eco-efficiency” of the option…defined as the ratioof provided value to environmental load.
• The closer the “loop” is to the user…the lower the load on the environment.
After Ishii, K., "Incorporating End-of-Life Strategy in Product Definition," Invited paper, Eco Design '99: First International Symposium on Environmentally Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing, February 1999, Tokyo, Japan.
How do we respond as engineers?• Make sure we evaluate the “real” impact of our technical solutions
in terms of how much of the “gap” we are removing (i.e. howmuch is a particular technology “wedge” going to reduce the gap?*) OR design our technical solutions to have the largest impact on the gap.
• Make the business case for sustainable manufacturingby including life cycle cost of environmental impact (the “true cost” of the product including the ‘environmental capital’)
• Include the supply chain in this through the design process• Develop analytical/engineering tools (design/process plan) to
enable decisions/tradeoffs based on life cycle costs…ie EnviroCAD
• Make sure to include our social science/policy friends in the discussion as there will be “side effects”
• Capitalize on the technology innovations as entrepreneurs• Educate…educate…educate
•Ref. S. Pacala and R. Socolow, "Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the next 50 •Years with Current Technologies," Science, August 2004, Vol. 305, pp. 968-972.