The Greening of Engineering

Fifty years ago, engineers might plausibly have pleaded ignorance to the environmental consequences of the products and processes they devised. In many cases, there was little available information about the substances they used and a general sense that the environment had an almost boundless capacity for recovery. As a result, environmental considerations were simply not a part of engineering design. Though their work has improved our quality of life immeasurably, it has also led to overflowing landfills, polluted rivers, costly remediation projects, and, most significantly, lives lost or shortened.

Julie Zimmerman, an assistant professor of civil engineering, believes that we now know enough about the interaction of the engineered and the natural worlds to guide the creation of new and sustainable products and processes. “It’s ultimately more effective and more economical to design products from scratch to be green,” she says. Zimmerman approaches what she calls “environmentally benign design of engineered systems” from a number of perspectives. As an engineer, she is collaborating with NASA to develop specifications for materials used in the next generation of spacecraft that are safe and renewable. “We now know a lot about specific molecular structures that are toxic,” she says. “We can build that knowledge into design and selection processes from the very beginning.”

As a realist, Zimmerman understands that knowledge is not enough. Most organizations adopt green engineering practices only if they perceive an advantage in doing so. NASA has a number of incentives to create environmentally benign designs, including preserving the health of the astronauts confined in close quarters over long periods of time. But in other cases, the return on investment is too long or the benefits are not captured by the current markets. Zimmerman found this out when consulting for an automotive company. She was working to replace a metalworking fluid that could not be recycled and that proved fertile ground for the growth of deadly microbes. Even though the bio-based product Zimmerman proposed was both antimicrobial and recyclable, the company was content to retain its existing system of treating the fluid with antimicrobials because it did not ultimately bear the cost of the fluid disposal.

This experience convinced Zimmerman that for green engineering to be widely accepted, it had to be considered in a larger economic and policy context. “You must take a broad perspective to achieve meaningful change,” she says. That is why Zimmerman co-authored The Twelve Principles of Green Engineering, providing a framework for engineers to use when innovating and designing the next generation of products, processes, and systems.

Zimmerman’s desire to understand the intersection of policy and engineering led to a stint at the Environmental Protection Agency, where she still has a part-time post. She served as a program coordinator in the Office of Research and Development, managing research grants for universities and small businesses in green engineering, green chemistry, pollution prevention, and sustainability.

Zimmerman believes that changes in policy to reinforce green engineering will have greater chances of success if newly trained engineers make sustainability a part of their practice.  It is one reason she organized the People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) Award competition, which brings over 40 teams of engineering students to Washington, D.C. to present their solution to a sustainability challenge. And it is also why she returned to U.Va., where she earned her undergraduate degree. “The Engineering School is unique,” she says. “There are so many opportunities here to address the larger questions through interdisciplinary work, both within the school and across the University.”