Sustainable engineering: confusion and consumers

It is often difficult to understand what is meant when someone starts talking about sustainability, sustainable development or sustainable engineering. Different people understand different things, depending on their own personal experiences and their current job description. For some, sustainability is about being environmentally aware, or 'green' - ensuring that products do not use up valuable resources or give off harmful pollutants. To others, sustainability is providing appropriate solutions to those in developing countries - solutions that use technology relevant to the situation in which they find themselves. To yet others, sustainability implies the continuance of their business - the self-sustaining of the company. While sustainability texts such as Cradle to Cradle and Factor Four may prove inspirational to those trying to understand sustainability, attempts to implement some of the suggestions within small or medium sized engineering companies are likely to draw the reaction 'that's for big companies, what about us?'. This paper therefore: (1) addresses widespread confusion among non-specialists as to what 'sustainable engineering' actually means and its consequent implications for engineers in industry; (2) uses a number of product examples to draw out six 'key principles' that underpin sustainable engineering. The paper demonstrates that the starting point of any industry attempt to be 'sustainable' must be a proper understanding of the consumer, particularly in the areas of product functionality and quality. Only after such understanding has been gained can further methodologies be used to consider enviro-/socio-sustainability of a product.