Introduction to Sustainable and Green Engineering: General Principles and Targets

This article presents a brief introduction to the field of sustainable and green engineering. The article begins with a brief case of the historical path of early aspects of sustainability from a regulatory perspective. The case is made that the adoption of programs that safeguard human health and ecological systems was primarily due to a series of disastrous incidents and then regulations were enacted. This cycle of steps needs to change to a proactive use of sustainable and green engineering. Adoption of many of the sustainable technologies in this encyclopedia as well as educational programs in sustainability should be implemented. In this chapter an introduction to green engineering design of a chemical process is given. This is followed by a presentation of the life-cycle assessment tool. In conclusion a sustainability tool used to evaluate the companies in the chemical industry is presented.