Sustainable Engineering Practice

¶ … Engineering and Sustainability

Sustainability Consortium clarifies goals, Walmart relationship (Arizona State University): This article details a consortium of scientists, researchers, and engineers from a variety of research institutes that is trying to develop a Sustainable Product Index for a wide variety of common products. The consortium has been working closely with Wal-Mart, but stressed that their efforts are aimed at the retail world at large, and are not simply meant to help this retail giant. Their main goal is to develop scientific methods for measuring the sustainability of products, which could be used (with continual adjustment) well into the future. The creation of an index of many current products would have immediate benefits.

This article relays some important news in he world of sustainability; when consumers know how sustainable the various products they buy are, they can make more informed decisions that will lead to new overall sustainability in industry and commerce. Engineers are a vital part of the consortium's efforts, enabling an understanding the true impact and long-reaching effects of the many manufacturing and distribution processes involved in the index.

Sustainability and Crop Engineering (Jared Flesher, Green Inc.): Genetically modified crops have been touted by the engineers that developed them as the answer to world hunger and other problems, but questions have arisen as to whether these crops are truly sustainable. Though plants can be genetically engineered to resist certain diseases or pesticides, they have not proven as productive or as able to reproduce as non-genetically modified plants. This leads to questions about whether it is really prudent to devote agricultural land to their development, as well as concerns regarding what their presence in the world could do to existing non-genetically modified plant species and crops.

Genetic engineering is one of the more controversial and complex areas of science and engineering, and it intersects with sustainability in a variety of ways. Proponents of the science say that it can lead to greater sustainability through the more efficient use of land and the creation of bigger and better food supplies. Critics point out that the promise of such crops has been around for some time with little results, while there are very real negative effects.