This page describes the development of the Green Engineering Website

Green Engineering

Green Engineering is the design, commercialization, and use of processes and products, which are feasible and economical while minimizing 1) generation of pollution at the source and 2) risk to human health and the environment. The discipline embraces the concept that decisions to protect human health and the environment can have the greatest impact and cost effectiveness when applied early to the design and development phase of a process or product. By providing risk assessment tools, EPA offers a unique approach to green engineering. The Green Engineering Program pioneers the use of risk assessment tools beyond just screening chemicals. The Green Engineering Program applies these tools to the design, retrofit, and optimization of feedstocks, waste streams, and unit operations in processes and products.

The concept of risk assessment takes into consideration the extent of harm a chemical and its use can pose to the environment. While traditional pollution prevention techniques focused on simply reducing as much waste as possible by treating all wastes as equal, risk assessment methods used in pollution prevention can help quantify the degree of environmental impact for individual chemicals. With this approach to pollution prevention, engineers can design intelligently by focusing on the most beneficial way to minimize risk. By applying risk assessment concepts to processes and products, the engineer can:

-Quantify the environmental impacts of specific chemicals on people and ecosystems.
-Prioritize chemicals that need to be minimized or eliminated.
-Optimize design to avoid or reduce environmental impacts.
-Design greener products and processes.

The engineer, as the designer of processes and products, also has a responsibility to design processes and products that have a minimal impact on the environment. We as educators can prepare our students to use the risk assessment tools of green engineering to design new processes and modify existing processes. As a result, green engineering can become a central component of the engineering curriculum.