Sustainability

During the industrial revolution during the colonial days, industries bloomed instantly due to the needs of different industrial products. These further amplified by the needs of war related assets such as warships, tanks, weapons and many more. During the industrial revolution bloom, new knowledge was found, new inventions were invented and also a lot of new job opportunities were being made available. However during that time, people would only take into account what implication of the industrial revolution in a very short sight of the future as the survival of the nation comes first instead of their future as a lost war would mean lost of a country. The industrial era of the world has come quite a long way until now. A lot of things has happened during the course of the industrial era as more and more awareness has been developed. Among them is sustainability. Sustain means to cause something to continue for a period of time. Therefore sustainability would mean the ability to cause something to continue for a period of time. In this modern era, natural resources are being exploited for our benefits and also for our comfort. Due to the massive demand of natural resources to be converted to end product, the rate of natural resources being extracted from the earth is very rapid that they would become exhausted after a period of time. A very good example would be the depletion of fossil fuel in our world. Not only the diminishing of resources of our mother earth is an issue, the deterioration of our planets ecosystem is another issue that we are facing these days. The worlds climate is changing due to the excessive heat from our industrial sector. Therefore realizing this effort, many sectors have started to implement sustainability in their projects in which to respect environmental limits while fulfilling social wants and needs so as to adapt to the rapidly developing world as well as keeping their edge in the industrial sector [1]. These days we would be able to read concerns about the environmental problems such as the drastic climate change such as the terrible winter in the northern hemisphere during spring, different types of pollution whether water pollution, air or soil pollution. There are also growing concerns about the social problems such as poverty and health of civilian. In order to not contribute while helping to solve this problem, design for sustainability comes into the picture. Design for sustainability is when a design which incorporates the idea of environmental and social concerns as key elements in their long-term product innovation strategy. In order to make

design for sustainability, companies would incorporate environmental and social factors into product development, throughout the life cycle of the product, the supply chain and with respect to their socio-economic surroundings [2]. In the ever increasing awareness towards sustainability, engineers would need to emphasize on design for sustainability when designing a product or when planning a project. One of the reasons would be due to the pressure that would be imposed by the government, business partners that take sustainability seriously, non-governmental organizations and also the citizen. Not only that, by taking sustainability into account during a design of a project or product, the end product might be able to obtain tax exemption. For an example, should an office building getting certified by the green building index or LEED system, a certain amount of tax exemption would be able to be obtained since the government is encouraging the movement towards sustainability in projects and designs. Apart from that, taking sustainability into consideration during a design would help create a more efficient method of creating a product in which that one would be able to decrease the energy, material, and resources used thus saving costs and also contributing to the design for sustainability. Sustainability would also take into account the efficiency and effectiveness of a consumption of a product. A product being produced is for the purpose of satisfying the customer or by helping the targeted customer market in their daily life or activities. Therefore a good sustainable product would be able to be used to its full potential by the targeted customers. A product being produced to cater for the customers needs without having features or abilities not used is important for sustainability since the resources and materials used into creating the product is not being wasted [3]. An engineer has the responsibility to take care of the environment and also the social during a design of a product. The environment should not be tarnished or the amount of damage done to the environment during the course of creating a product would be minimized. This is done by not only looking at the end of the pipe of a design. Instead, a thorough attention would be spent on analyzing the whole process of the development of the product so as to make sure that the process itself would not tarnish the environment while maintaining its functionality by being able to serve the consumers well. Apart from that, an engineer should always be alert and continue to search for any advancement in technology in the industry that they are working in. The application of newer technology would be able to help engineer to create products that

would have a more positive effect towards the environment and also the social since an engineer is to be trusted to be knowledgeable in their particular field and would be able to create a product which is able to satisfy the consumers need while does not compromise the health of the environment. The life cycle analysis is becoming more and more important in our society due to the fact that there is more attention being placed into the issue of the degradation of our environment. Until recently, the definition of life cycle analysis is not clearly stated but due to the recent spike in interest towards life cycle analysis, the European Committee for Standardisation defined life cycle analysis as a method used to quantify environmental burdens based on inventory of environmental factors for a product, process or activity from abstraction of raw materials to their final disposal. It should be noted that Life cycle assessment is said to consist of life cycle inventory which is an objective data-based process of quantifying energy and raw material requirements, air emissions, water borne effluents, solid waste and also other environmental releases which happened throughout the whole life cycle of a product. Not only that, the life cycle impact analysis is also part of the life cycle assessment. This analysis is a technical, quantitative and qualitative process to characterize and assess the effects of the environmental loadings identified in the inventory component. For this assessment, both ecological and human health consideration must be addressed. It should be noted that other effects such as habitat and pollution must be taken into account during the assessment. The last section of the life cycle assessment is the life cycle improvement analysis. It is a systematic evaluation in which takes account the needs and opportunities to help reduce the environmental burden which is associated with energy and raw materials used throughout the whole life cycle of a product. Quantitative and qualitative measures of improvement may be included into the analysis such as changing product design, the use of different raw materials and also waste management [4]. The life cycle cost is defined as the analysis of the total discounted cost of owning, operating, maintaining and disposing of a building or a building system over a period of time. Life cycle cost analysis on the other hand is an economic evaluation technique that is used to determine the total cost of producing a product the end of a product over a span of period of time [5].

An example of life cycle cost would be the life cycle cost analysis for constant-airvolume and variable-air-volume air-conditioning systems which is done in a building in Adana, Turkey. The building that is used for life cycle cost could be conditioned with the constant air volume or the variable air volume systems. For comparison, the life-cycle cost analysis was used with a present-worth cost method and the comparison between the 2 systems was made for eight types of different cases with different scenarios. The specimen building for this comparison was a building located in Adana, Turkey in which has 3 almost identical floors with gross building area of 1628m2 while having the outside walls lightly coloured. From that analysis, it was found that the variable air volume system has an advantage in which the present-worth cost of the VAV system is lower than the constant air volume system at the end of the lifetime of the systems. Apparently, with just after 4 years in all cases, with respect to the constant air volume system, the variable air volume system would pay itself back placing the variable air volume system to be very attractive when it comes to buildings air conditioning system [6]. As for conclusion, the incorporation of the principles of sustainability in design is really important in the modern world of industry. By incorporating the principles of sustainability in design, one would be able to help maintain or decrease the negative environmental impact during the course of producing a product. Not only that, with the diminishing of natural resources especially the fossil fuels becoming more and more imminent, the usage of the principles of sustainability would be able to delay the incident from happening. Apart from that, as the world is becoming more and more advanced with the ever increase in human population, proper sustainability principles must be applied in the different areas of industry so as to make sure that the ever increasing population in the future would be able to enjoy the beauty of the world like we are doing now.

References [1] [2] Sustainability: Can our society endure? , http://www.sustainability.com/sustainability Dr. M.R.M. Crul, J.C. Diehl. Design For Sustainability: A Practical Approach for

Developing Economies. p. 16. [3] Dr. M.R.M. Crul, J.C. Diehl. Design For Sustainability: A Practical Approach for

Developing Economies. p. 26. [4] J. J. Lee, P. OCallaghan, D. Allen (1995). Critical Review of Life Cycle Analysis and

Assessment Techniques and Their Application to Commercial Activities. Resource, Conservation and Recycling, 13, 37-56 [5] [6] T. Mearig, N. Coffee, M. Morgan. Life Cycle Cost Analysis handbook. p. 2. M. A. Aktacir, O. Buyukalaca, T. Yilmaz (2006). Life-cycle Cost Analysis for Constant-

air-volume and Variable-air-volume Air-conditioning Systems. Applied Energy, 83, 606-627