MODULE – 5

Ethical Cultural and Sustainable Design

Session 41 1.1 Environmental Movement

Understanding about environment movement relies on precise definitions of terms,

particularly when branching into new fields of study.
An ecosystem is a closed geographical area, including the living entities in the space
above and below it. The area may have inputs and outputs, but the systems cooperate to
maintain a balanced environment.
All ecosystems on the earth combine into what is known as the biosphere. Earth’s
biosphere is the part of the planet that can support life and includes the earth’s crust,
atmosphere, and water layers.
Session 42 5.1.1 Ecosystem and Balance
▪ Ecosystems can be modeled in engineering terms as control volumes with defined
physical boundaries enclosing living organisms, natural elements (i.e., portion of the
earth’s surface and crust, air, water), people, and man-made structures.
▪ Ongoing ecosystems must achieve a balance among all the exchanges of energy and
material among its inhabitants.
▪ Members of an ecosystem can be modeled as a set of function structures interacting
with each other and their environment by exchanging flows of energy, material, and
signals. Ecosystem ecology is the study of these flows.
▪ An ecosystem survives as long as the resources within it are adequate to support the
living systems it holds. The resources may be supplied from other members inside the
system, from the outside, or restored through some cyclic action of the system itself.
▪ The earth supplies essential resources for plants and animals through sunlight and
three natural cycles: carbon, nitrogen, and water. Disruption of these inputs causes
imbalance in the ecosystems, which will ultimately impact the survivability of its
inhabitants.
Basic biological ecosystems maintain balance by adhering to canons
developed through evolution.
1. Use waste as a resource
2. Diversify and cooperate to fully use the habitat
3. Gather and use energy efficiently
4. Optimize rather than maximize
5. Use material sparingly
6. Don’t foul nests
7. Don’t draw down resources
8. Remain in balance with the biosphere
9. Run on information
10. Shop locally
Session 43
5.1.2 Dependence on Fossil Fuels
➢ Modern society has been built with a dependence on fossil fuels: coal, oil,
and natural gas. The combustion of fossil fuels produces CO2, the chief
constituent of GHG. In addition to long-term costs, there is a growing
recognition of the need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels because of
their impact on the environment.
➢ Now, oil supply disruptions pose less of a threat. This is beneficial to
sustainability goals. World is producing historically high levels of fossil
fuels due to new extraction methods
➢ Imports of crude oil are still needed due to a mismatch in domestically
produced oil and current refineries, but the trend of crude oil production
is projecting energy independence.
Session 44 5.1.3 Behaviour Changes Started
➢ The environmental movement has great impact on changing attitudes and behaviors of
citizens, governments, and businesses. Environmental science principles are now
engrained in the education system and taught to children in K–12 classrooms.
➢ Elementary schoolchildren learn about GHG, threats to the ozone layer, and that some
aerosol sprays are not good for the planet. The habit of recycling household trash was
born out of the environmental movement.
➢ citizens view recycling as separating their waste into different streams as it comes out
of their homes and businesses.The EPA tracks the generation of solid waste and how it
is handled using a mass balance methodology based on data from a variety of sources
including suppliers, industry associations, municipal governments, and other agencies.
➢ government regulations continue to motivate businesses to modify production
methods to reduce the creation of harmful emissions into the air, the wastewater, and
the solid waste.
➢ Because of world trade this has required many companies to adopt their regulations.
Engineers and designers respond to these incentives by creating technology to reduce
air, water, and solid waste pollution.
Session 45 5.2 Sustainability
➢ To sustain means to continue on into the future, usually without significant change.
➢ Sustainability is a term that has come into popular culture as a characteristic of
national fiscal policy, personal budgetary policy, and environmental policy.
➢ A formal definition of sustainable development (used interchangeably with
sustainability in much of the literature) was established by a report titled, “Our
Common Future,” from the United Nations World Commission on Environment and
Economic Development (WCED)
➢ The report states: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs.”2 This is a statement of social equity for future generations. The statement’s
language is clear, but the true meaning and the interpretation require elaboration to
extract operational principles.
Session 46 5.2.1 WCED Report on Sustainability
➢ WCED to examine economic and environmental conditions to recommend strategies
for managing global resources and preserving the environment to meet the needs of
the rapidly expanding population.
➢ The WCED Report described characteristics of activities that would meet the definition
of sustainable and, by extension, contribute to sustainable development. Critical
objectives for environment and development policies that follow from the concept of
sustainable development include :
• Revive growth in an economic sense—This is particularly in developing countries
where increases in population represent unused human capacity.
• Change the quality of growth—Any activities undertaken for economic growth
must weigh expected financial gain against the impact on the environment and
human population.
• Meet essential needs for jobs, food, energy, water, and sanitation—This objective
is a restatement of most basic human needs with the addition of jobs as an enabling
condition. The WCED report further states that “overriding priority should be given”
to meeting needs of the world’s poor.
• Ensure a sustainable level of population—Every ecosystem has an intrinsic limit on
the size of the population it can support.
• Conserve and enhance the resource base—The earth has sets of finite resources
(e.g., potable water, fossil fuels, and minerals), renewable resources (e.g., forests),
and, to some extent, unlimited resources (e.g., sunlight, air, and water). The best
way to conserve the resource base is to reduce per-capita consumption.
• Reorient technology and manage risk—The technology that defines the
Anthropocene age must be focused on solving problems of sustainability. It has
been acknowledged that technology in the developed world has caused many of
the sustainability problems.
• Merge environment and economics in decision making—This objective is a direct
instruction to decision-makers. The WCED report declares that economic and
ecological goals are not naturally in opposition. However, the decision-making
process must be able to articulate and quantify the impacts of alternatives on a
vastly broader spectrum of objectives than required at the product level.
Session 47 5.3 Challenges of Sustainability for Business
➢ Protection of the earth’s environment is high on the value scale of most citizens of the
world’s developed countries.
➢ Investment firms now offer options of stocks and mutual funds of companies that meet
thresholds of corporate social responsibility (CSR).
➢ Measures used to categorize firms based on CSR include (but are not limited to)
environmental performance based on impact reports of toxins and emission releases,
regulatory compliance violations, and organization processes in place (e.g.,
environmental management systems).
➢ Most corporations realize that it is in their best interest to take a strong pro-
environment approach to their business.
➢ Publicly traded corporations include corporate environmental goals and sustainability
statements on their websites and in their annual reports. Some provide additional
detail on sustainability efforts.
 ➢ Challenges
• It costs more than regular products to manufacture .
• The economic success of business relies on customers choosing to pay a premium to
support use of recycled content.
• However, not all recycled products will be more expensive than their counterparts.
Companies must develop sophisticated decision-making strategies to predict
accordingly. Companies must also continue to develop improved processes to reduce
the cost of including recycled content in goods.
• Companies with global markets must also meet regulations in the countries of their
markets. This may mean creating product variants for different markets.
• monitors environmental regulations in relevant locations and develops strategies for
dealing with differences in laws between countries. must also review legislation
developing in other countries that is likely to influence in the future.
• corporate actions routinely are taken for the overall economic benefit of their owners
after taking into account primarily economic and performance trade-offs
• The majority of sustainable development decision-making scenarios will include some
negative movement in one of the environment, economic, or social objectives.
Session 48 5.4 End of Life Product Transformations
➢ Essentially, all products, devices, and systems that will degrade throughout their
lifetime until they are no longer useful should be rendered into a form that supports
sustainability. Putting nonworking items into a landfill is the least desirable outcome.
➢ When stuff is useful, we show it respect and call it material. When the same stuff
ceases to be useful, we lose respect for it and call it waste.
➢ There are limited options for handling the waste of products that an end user no longer
wants. The following are options available at a product’s end of useful life:
• reuse
• remanufacture
• recycle
• Combustion
• landfill
➢Reuse
• Reuse means identifying a new end user who sees value in the product as it exists at
the time of the original user’s disposal. Allenby calls this point in a product life cycle
the “end of first life.”
• Reuse means identifying a new end user who sees value in the product as it exists at
the time of the original user’s disposal. Allenby calls this point in a product life cycle
the “end of first life.”
• Today there are more venues for the sale of used goods, either by the first-owner or
by an intermediary. They include garage sales, rummage sales (usually organized by
volunteer members of a nonprofit organization), and retail stores supported by
donations and run by charitable or philanthropic organizations
• The Internet has provided for the expansion of the sales of used goods.
• Parts of an existing product can also be reused. This first requires the disassembly of
the disposed device and then the identification of a next user. In the case of parts
reuse, it is more common for the process to be initiated by a third party who obtains
the discarded device from the first owner
➢Remanufacturing
• Remanufacturing is the refurbishing of an existing system by restoring it to near new
condition. This process can be limited to the cleaning and replacement of worn parts
(refurbishing) or the harvesting of key subassemblies for placement into new parts.
• Remanufacturing saves energy by reducing the need for the processing of raw
materials into new products.
• There are drawbacks to the remanufacturing process from the producer’s point of
view:
• (1) It can cut into the new product market share, and
• (2) the quality of the remanufactured product may be lower than that of the
original product.
Session 49
➢Recycling
• Recycling is the recovery from the waste stream, products, or goods that can be used
in the raw materials stream to make the same or similar material.
• Recycling is the end-of-life strategy that is best suited for deriving profit from the
waste stream.
• The benefits of materials recycling are the contribution to the supply of materials, with
corresponding reduction in the consumption of natural resources, and the reduction in
the volume of solid waste.
• Moreover, recycling contributes to environmental improvement through the amount
of energy saved by producing the material from recycled (secondary) material rather
than primary sources (ore or chemical feedstock). but recycle energy is small
compared with the original energy required to make the material.
• Since most of this energy is generated from fossil fuels, the reduction of carbon
dioxide and particulate emissions due to recycling is appreciable. Recycling of
materials also directly reduces pollution.
Session 50

The steps in recycling a material are

(1) collection and transport,
(2) separation
(3) identification and sorting
➢ Collection and Transport
• Collection for recycling is determined by the location in the material cycle where
the discarded material is found.
• Home scrap is residual material from primary material production, which can be
returned directly to the production process. Essentially all home scrap is recycled.
• Prompt industrial scrap or new scrap is that generated during the manufacture of
products, for example, compressed bundles of lathe turnings or stamping discard
from sheets. This type of scrap is sold directly in large quantities by the
manufacturing plant to the material producer.
• Old scrap is scrap generated from a product that has completed its useful life, such
as a scrapped automobile or refrigerator. These products are collected and
processed in a scrapyard and sold to material producers.
• Materials can be economically recycled only if an effective collection system can be
established.
• Collection methods include curbside pickup, buy-back centers (for some
containers), and resource recovery centers where solid waste is sorted for
recyclables and the waste is burned for energy.
➢ Separation
• Separation of economically profitable recyclable material from scrap typically follows
one of two paths. In the first path, selective dismantling takes place.
• Toxic materials such as engine oil are removed, and high-value materials such as gold
and copper are removed.
• Dismantling leads naturally to sorting of materials into like categories.
• In the second path, the product is subjected to multiple high-energy impacts to shred
it into small, irregular pieces.
• Shredding creates a material form that assists in separation. For example, ferrous
material can be removed with large magnets, leaving behind debris that must be
disposed of, sometimes by incineration.
Identification and Sorting
• The economic value of recycling is largely dependent on the degree to which materials
can be identified and sorted into categories.
• Material that has been produced by recycling is generally called secondary material.
• The addition of secondary material to virgin material in melting or molding can degrade
the properties of the resultant material if the chemical composition of the secondary
material is not carefully controlled.
• There is concern about buildup of these tramp elements as steel is recycled, sometimes
multiple times. Often, recycled material is used for a less critical application than its
original use.
• Other materials that may not be recycled economically are zinc-coated steel
(galvanized), ceramic materials (except glass), and parts with glued identification labels
made from a different material than the part.
• Composite materials consisting of mixtures of glass and polymer represent an extreme
problem in recycling. Disposal of polymer products without an attempt for recycling
leads to a major environmental insult as an ocean clogged with discarded polymer
products.
➢ Combustion
• Incineration reduces the volume of solid waste that goes to the landfill by burning
the combustible organic material.
• The combustion converts the retained energy of the solid waste into heat, which
can be used to generate steam and thus electricity.
• The volume of solid waste is reduced by 50 to 95 percent depending on the
effectiveness of the sorting process.
• The outputs of the incineration process are ash (the noncombustible inorganic
waste), flue gases, and heat.
• A modern municipal incineration plant employs considerable technology to perform
its function without causing objectionable pollution.
• The combustion process must be capable of handling a large flow of solid waste and
produce controlled high temperatures.
• The flue gas contains significant amounts of fine particulates in the form of heavy
metals, dioxins, furans, SO2, CO2, and HCl (all pollutants). Thus, it is vital to control
the flue gases by means of temperature control, particle filtration, and gas
scrubbers.
➢ Landfill
• A landfill is not a trash dump. A landfill is an airtight, lined (usually with polymer
sheeting), structured containment making for a permanent underground burial site for
compacted solid waste.
• The waste is set into the ground and isolated from the elements (e.g., air, rain,
groundwater, and animals) so that it can remain in its original form and decompose
very slowly.
• Landfills literally fill in space to create more land surface. Some landfills are enclosed in
a clay liner that serves to separate the waste more thoroughly from its physical
surroundings.
• The two challenges to maintaining a landfill are controlling leaching and methane gas.
The penetration of some water into a landfill is inevitable. As water moves through the
waste, it is contaminated by organic material, metals, and products of the slow
decomposition to create a mixture of water and leachate.
• Landfills are built with systems to direct leachate drainage into a collection pond
where the contaminated water can be treated.
• The trash in a landfill will decompose in an anaerobic process. This creates a
mixture of gases of about 50 percent methane and 50 percent carbon dioxide (both
greenhouse gases). These gases must be released through a piping system..
• The gases produced by a landfill (LFG) can be used as an energy source.3 There are
methods to use LFG in combustion as a fuel for producing electricity and running
some heavy equipment. Methane is the major component of liquid natural gas and
can be recovered from the LFG for separate use.