Transcript Earth Island: Solutions

Earth Island: Solutions
Industrial Engineering
&
The Environment
Lecture 14 Outline
Environmental Solutions
• Some facts about the problem
• Some Roles for Industrial Engineers
– Pollution Prevention in Production Processes
– Understanding the Systems Problems
– Assessing Systems
• Sustainability
– at Georgia Tech
– The Natural Step
– Natural Capitalism
Frightening Facts
• 180 million tons of
trash/year in U.S.
• 50% of topsoil
• Everglades extinct?
• Loss of species
– frogs
– we save mountains, not
lowlands
• Water, aquifers
More facts
• Fertility rates
• Waste
• Equilibria
Pollution Prevention
Idea: instead of treating waste,
don’t produce it.
– Move the environmental solution upstream in
the production process,just as we move quality
concerns upstream.
– Role of I.E.s
Understanding Systems Problems
• Tragedy of Commons.
– Example: whales and the IWC
– Example: strip mining the ocean floor, where
there is a new species every square meter.
• Limits to Growth
– Example: Human Population, now over
6,000,000,000
• Transportation Engineering:
– Building more highways does not reduce
traffic problems. (Why?) It increases oil usage
and pollution.
Assessing Systems
• A production process can not always be
evaluated in isolation, but must be evaluated
in situ, as part of a system
• IE methods and approaches can help in the
evaluation of systems
Sustainability
The idea:
Could we continue our current activities
indefinitely?
A definition of sustainability
(Carol Carmichael, Ga. Tech
Center for Sustainability)
Sustainability at Georgia Tech
• We are one of the leading institutions
• Georgia Tech mission statement
• Center for Sustainable Technology
• Project 3: you assess sustainability.
The Natural Step
• Four Principles
– Systematic destruction of green space
– Systematic removal of material from earth’s
crust
– Systematic placement of material requiring
safeguarding into the environment
• Founded by Dr. Roberds. Now in many
countries.
• Can we tax resource use rather than profits?
Natural Capitalism
(Lovinses, Hawken)
• Paul Hawken in The Ecology of Commerce
says that industry must save the
environment because it must. It is the only
entity powerful enough to do so.
• Natural Capitalism proposes ideas for a
different business mindset.
• One idea: Provide services, not goods
– Example: Ray Anderson’s company Interfaces
leases carpet squares
Service vs. Product
• Imagine buying the use of a working
automobile for 12 years. Notice how this
would change the incentives of the
automobile manufacturer.