Why is Sustainable Engineering important?
- Transparency for the whole production system
- Holistic consideration of environmental and economic aspects
- Systematic linking of engineering with sustainability assessment
- Clear views of priorities, risks, and trade-offs
- Comprehensive action plans for sustainability goals and waste reduction targets
- Integration of engineering expertise with Carbon Footprinting and Life Cycle Assessment
- Life cycle perspectives at the heart of engineering
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What does it mean to do Sustainable Engineering?
The basis for sustainability in engineering is a profound understanding of the principles of resource efficiency, life cycle thinking, industrial ecology, risk management, and sustainable production and consumption. Sustainability engineering involves and requires a systems understanding of technological, economic, environmental, and sustainability issues from the corporate, process, product, supply chain, and regional perspectives.
This understanding is reached through expertise and experience in applying sustainability assessment methods and tools such as life cycle assessment, material flow analysis, environmental footprinting, and carbon footprinting.
Umberto NXT product family
Efficiency Software
Umberto NXT MFCA
for increasing material efficiency
- gets you started on resource efficiency in your business with material flow cost accounting
- calculates the true costs of material losses
- visualizes material flows and costs using Sankey diagrams
Umberto NXT Efficiency
for optimizing production processes
- makes material and energy flows within the production system more transparent
- recognizes cost drivers for processes, material, and energy use
- compares and evaluates improvement measures
LCA Software
Umberto NXT CO2
for comprehensive carbon footprints
- calculates climate impacts for products and businesses
- generates well-founded CO2 balances based on established standards
- represents the basis for reaching your CO2 reduction goals
Umberto NXT LCA
for generating powerful LCAs
- calculates all environmental impacts over the entire product life cycle
- presents convincing LCA results in tables, graphs, and as Sankey diagrams
- compatible with various LCA databases (ecoinvent or GaBi databases)
All in One
Umberto NXT Universal
for sustainability and productivity in one
- combines cost and environmental perspectives
- increases planning confidence through comprehensive simulations
- presents easy-to-understand visualizations using Sankey diagrams
- provides flexible interconnections with other tools and advanced modeling with scripting language
Current topics in our blog KnowTheFlow
Take a look at our KnowTheFlow Blog. You'll find sharing of knowledge and experiences on current topics such as material and energy flow management, energy and material efficiency, Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA), Carbon Footprinting, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). Get involved in the discussions on sustainability and productivity. We look forward to your comments and contributions.
Umberto - The tool for sustainable engineering
What is Sustainable Engineering?
Sustainable engineering is the process of designing or operating production systems in a manner that energy and resource use is sustainable. Sustainable engineering is looking at the interactions between technical, ecological, social and economic systems and avoids burden shifting from one area to another.
Sustainable Engineers work on solutions to the topics that matter: climate change, water availability, energy futures, waste management, carbon reduction and low-carbon living, sustainable construction, etc. Carbon sequestration and assessing environmental credits are also an area for sustainable engineering since a holistic view on the challenges of climate change or other environmental impacts is required to find solutions. Sustainability Engineering shines a light on the implications that today’s activities have on the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Goal for sustainable engineers
The target for sustainable engineering is for a company to take into account all technical, ecological, social, and economic aspects of its production system to enable sustainable change through engineering innovation.
Sustainability means living well within the ecological limits of a finite planet. Best practice advising on strategies for staying, or, rather, getting back within these planetary boundaries is a challenge that requires tools, expertise, and systematic approaches capable of dealing with these complexities. More than ever, engineers need to find holistic and effective solutions to protect the planet’s vital life support systems and, at the same time, meet the needs of a growing human population. Concepts such as life cycle thinking, industrial ecology, and sustainable systems engineering are important elements in the work of a sustainable engineer. Umberto is the software solution to holistically support all these efforts.