Principles of Green Engineering | Chemistry For Sustainability

12 Principles of Green Engineering

Green engineering is defined by 12 principles, or methodologies, that can be applied to develop sustainable technologies.

Inherent Rather than Circumstantial: Designers need to strive to ensure that all materials and energy inputs and outputs are as inherently nonhazardous as possible.
Prevention Instead of Treatment: It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it is formed.
Design for Separation: Separation and purification operations should be designed to minimize energy consumption and materials use.
Maximize Efficiency: Products, processes and systems should be designed to maximize mass, energy, space, and time efficiency.
Output-Pulled Versus Input-Pushed: Products, processes, and systems should be "output pulled" rather than "input pushed" through the use of energy and materials.
Conserve Complexity: Embedded entropy and complexity must be viewed as an investment when making design choices on recycle, reuse, or beneficial disposition.
Durability Rather than Immortality: Targeted durability, not immortality, should be a design goal.
Meet Need, Minimize Excess: Design for unnecessary capacity or capability (e.g., "one size fits all") solutions should be considered a design flaw.
Minimize Material Diversity: Material diversity in multicomponent products should be minimized to promote disassembly and value retention.
Integrate Material & Energy Flows: Design of products, processes, and systems must include integration and interconnectivity with available energy and materials flows.
Design for Commercial “Afterlife”: Products, processes, and systems should be designed for performance in a commercial "afterlife."
Renewable Rather than Depleting: Material and energy inputs should be renewable rather than depleting.

As outlined in: Anastas, P.T., and Zimmerman, J.B., "Design through the Twelve Principles of Green Engineering", Env. Sci. and Tech., 37, 5, 94A-101A, 2003.

12 Principles of Green Engineering

Inherent Rather than Circumstantial: Designers need to strive to ensure that all materials and energy inputs and outputs are as inherently nonhazardous as possible.

Prevention Instead of Treatment: It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it is formed.

Design for Separation: Separation and purification operations should be designed to minimize energy consumption and materials use.

Maximize Efficiency: Products, processes and systems should be designed to maximize mass, energy, space, and time efficiency.

Output-Pulled Versus Input-Pushed: Products, processes, and systems should be "output pulled" rather than "input pushed" through the use of energy and materials.

Conserve Complexity: Embedded entropy and complexity must be viewed as an investment when making design choices on recycle, reuse, or beneficial disposition.

Durability Rather than Immortality: Targeted durability, not immortality, should be a design goal.

Meet Need, Minimize Excess: Design for unnecessary capacity or capability (e.g., "one size fits all") solutions should be considered a design flaw.

Minimize Material Diversity: Material diversity in multicomponent products should be minimized to promote disassembly and value retention.

Integrate Material & Energy Flows: Design of products, processes, and systems must include integration and interconnectivity with available energy and materials flows.

Design for Commercial “Afterlife”: Products, processes, and systems should be designed for performance in a commercial "afterlife."

Renewable Rather than Depleting: Material and energy inputs should be renewable rather than depleting.