Sustainable Business: Insights from the Field of Sustainability Engineering

This book stands on the shoulders of sustainability engineering insights to identify blind spots in conventional business, engineering, and environmental school curricula that result in substantial missed opportunities. Engineers have applied science to land people on the moon, design the cars we drive, and cram the power of a 20th-century supercomputer into the phones we carry. But what can happen when engineering’s systemic problem-solving skills are applied to improving the sustainability of business? This book stands on the shoulders of sustainability engineering insights to supplement business, engineering, and environmental curricula with tools necessary to effectively and efficiently improve the sustainability of organizations. Cutting through the clutter of terminology and approaches, this book uses case studies to outline a proven path to profitably secure “net zero” for facilities and their supply chains. And rather than stopping at the uninspiring target of “doing no harm,” it further empowers businesses and other organizations to create additional economic, environmental, and social benefits. This book: Offers numerous case studies from the Space Shuttle through the world’s first carbon neutral major food company to appropriate technology for safe water in developing countries to illustrate how to reduce environmental footprints while increasing profit margin and business value Explores redemptive entrepreneurship through the lens of the author’s founding of an award-winning engineering firm Presents strategies to strengthen the curricula of engineering, business, accounting, and procurement programs by uncovering significant sources of untapped value in conventional teaching