2. Resource management and sustainable production

2. Resource management and sustainable production

2.1 Resources and reserves

  • Renewable and non-renewable resources

  • Reserves

  • Renewability

2.2 Waste mitigation strategies

  • Re-use

  • Recycle

  • Repair

  • Recondition

  • Re-engineer

  • Pollution/waste

  • Methodologies for waste reduction and designing out waste

  • Dematerialization

  • Product recovery strategies at end of life/disposal

  • Circular economy—the use of waste as a resource within a closed loop system

2.3 Energy utilization, storage and distribution

  • Embodied energy

  • Distributing energy: national and international grid systems

  • Local combined heat and power (CHP)

  • Systems for individual energy generation

  • Quantification and mitigation of carbon emissions

  • Batteries, capacitors and capacities considering relative cost, efficiency, environmental impact and reliability

2.4 Clean technology

  • Drivers for cleaning up manufacturing: promoting positive impacts; ensuring neutral impact or minimizing negative impacts through conserving natural resources; reducing pollution and use of energy; reducing wastage of energy and resources

  • International legislation and targets for reducing pollution and waste

  • End-of-pipe technologies

  • Incremental and radical solutions

  • System level solutions

2.5 Green design

  • Strategies for green design (incremental and radical)

  • Green legislation

  • Timescale to implement green design

  • Drivers for green design (consumer pressure and legislation)

  • Design objectives for green products

  • Strategies for designing green products

  • The prevention principle

  • The precautionary principle

2.6 Eco-design

  • Timescale for implementing eco-design

  • The “cradle to grave” and “cradle to cradle” philosophy

  • Life cycle analysis (LCA)

  • LCA stages: pre-production; production; distribution including packaging; utilization and disposal

  • Environmental considerations

  • Environmental impact assessment matrix

  • Product life cycle stages: the role of the designer, manufacturer and user

  • The major considerations of the United Nations Environmental Programme Manual on Eco-design

  • “Design for the environment” software

  • Converging technologies

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