Engineering can play an important role in sustainable development by focusing on meeting human needs over wants and prioritizing projects that serve the most vulnerable populations. Engineers should consider how their work impacts sustainability, affordability, and accessibility. A socially sustainable product is manufactured sustainably and also improves people's lives. Engineers are not neutral and should strive to serve societal needs rather than just generate profits. They can help redefine commerce and an engineering culture focused on meeting needs sustainably through services rather than creating unnecessary products and infrastructure.

1. Engineering role in sustainability
Jordi Segalàs
Institute of Sustainability
Barcelona Tech University

2. Which role can engineering play in
sustainable development?

4. Serving Needs, or Quality of Life, or
Wants?
• “Traditional cultures, having more limited means
to satisfy human needs, tend to meet as many
needs as possible with as few resources as
possible.
• In contrast, industrial capitalism emphasises the
creation of specialised products that fight for
market niches to fill ‘needs’ that, as often as not,
cannot be satisfied by material goods.
(Natural Capitalism, Ch. 14)

5. Example: which of these is more worth
an engineer’s energy & interest?
Hasbro's Tooth Tunes toothbrushes have an MP3 player
built in. They use bone-conduction to rattle the sound through
your teeth for 3 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ViXgz0pGjQ&feature=related

6. Example: which of these is more worth
an engineer’s energy & interest?
Design of Temporary Shelters for Refugees
Thousands of refugee deaths from
hypothermia could be prevented every
year if a new hi-tech UK-designed tent
lining performs well in tests in
Afghanistan. A team from the University
of Cambridge has developed linings for
existing refugee tents that will pay for
themselves in saved heating costs in one
winter.
They are made of a sandwich of
materials: polyester wadding like you'd
find in a puffa jacket and a cheap
breathable waterproof membrane.

7. Choosing what you are engineering
for - engineers can’t be neutral
Luxury OK NEVER NEVER
Affluence
Quality GOOD MAYBE NEVER
Needs BRILLIANT GOOD MAYBE
Technology
No net impact In - between High impact

8. Engineers’ reputation as professionals, not
mercenaries - whose interests do we serve?
• “Video toothbrush”
• “In development by
OK NEVER NEVER
Panasonic, this
electric toothbrush
has a miniature video
camera mounted
beside the bristles to
allow the user to see
GOOD MAYBE on a monitor the
NEVER
‘40%’ of debris they
normally miss.”
• (TYNKYN - EC 11/01)
BRILLIANT GOOD MAYBE

9. What do you think? -
• Engineering is never neutral - every product
or project - or research topic - lies
somewhere on that matrix, and is going to
affect the sustainable/unsustainable
balance…. SO:
• What are the social responsibilities of
engineering – whom do we want to serve?

10. What defines a socially
sustainable product?
• Is being manufactured sustainably enough,
whatever the product’s social impact?
• Or, should engineers push for socially
sustainable features in the products: for
instance….affordability and accessibility for
the ‘excluded’ - the poorest 10%?
• Or, should we put our energy and interest into
products and projects which serve ‘needs’
rather than artificially created ‘wants’?

11. Case Study
http://www.interfacesustainability.com/

12. Enterprise core

13. Enterprise relation to Society
The company is part of a supply chain, with suppliers and customers and a market, our
share of which we hope to increase. Products flow through that supply chain in one
direction; money flows in the other direction.

14. XX Century Enterprise Model

15. • service oriented
• resource-efficient
• wasting nothing
• solar driven
• cyclical (no longer take-make-
waste linear)
• strongly connected to
stakeholders: communities
(building social equity),
customers, and suppliers—
and to one another.
• Our communities are stronger
and better educated

16. 7. Redesign of commerce
Redesigning commerce probably
hinges, more than anything else, on
the acceptance of entirely new notions
of economics, especially prices that
reflect full costs.
It means shifting emphasis from
simply selling products to
providing services
Relationships based on delivering, via
leasing agreements, the services our
products provide, in lieu of the
products themselves

17. 7. Redesign of commerce
Other examples:
Photocopies: Xerox: Sells copy services instead of copy
machines.
Elevator: Schindler, Sells vertical transport maintenance free
instead of elevators
We can go farther:
In ICT: You can buy hours of word editor instead of hardware
and software.
In civil engineering: you can provide the service: connection
between two places instead of roads. The enterprise is
responsible for maintenance, in case of interruption enterprise
is fined.

18. Redefine engineering culture away from
‘Building things’ to ‘meeting needs sustainably’?
The 19th (& 20th?) Century Engineer The 21st Century Engineer
I built all I didn’t need
this! to build
anything new!
Visible construction, at great public Providing and Refurbishing the
expense, to meet society’s wants minimum to meet society’s needs

20. Engineers provide the
interfaces... • Becoming
Products sustainable
requires leaders
who recognise
this world view,
and act
Economy accordingly.
- invented!
Society - instinctive?
Infrastructure
Environment -
‘inevitable’

22. Thank you for your attention!
Professor Jordi Segalas
Institute of Sustainability
Barcelona Tech unviersity
Barcelona, Catalunya