Materials and the Environment: Eco-informed Material Choice

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Product Description

Addressing the growing global concern for sustainable engineering, Materials and the Environment is the first book devoted exclusively to the environmental aspects of materials. With in-depth coverage of such topics as material consumption and its drivers, the material lifecycle, eco-informed material selection, renewable materials and sustainability, and legislative and regulatory aspects, along with eco-profiles of more than 60 widely used materials, this book will appeal to professional materials engineers and product designers who now, more than ever before, need to consider the environmental implications of materials in their designs.

* The first book devoted solely to the environmental aspects of materials and their selection, production, use and disposal, by noted materials authority Mike Ashby.

* Introduces methods and tools for thinking about and designing with materials within the context of their role in products and the environmental consequences.

* Contains numerous case studies showing how the methods discussed in the book can be applied to real-world situations.

* Includes full-color data-sheets for 60 of the most widely used materials, featuring such environmentally relevant information as their annual production and reserves, embodied energy and process energies, carbon footprints, and recycling data.

* The tools developed in the text are implemented in the CES EduPack Eco Design Edition software and new Eco Audit Tool available from Granta Design.

Materials and the Environment: Eco-informed Material Choice Review

Wal-Mart has just stated that it will be requiring all of its suppliers to provide a "green rating" on all of the products it sells, and the U.S. House of Representatives has passed the Cap and Trade energy bill. A book like this is very timely for most engineering students, who must, over time, learn to make do with less: fewer materials with less embodied energy at all cycles of a product's or project's life cycle.

I approach this book as an investor in raw materials and a student of Peak Oil. I was impressed with this book for several reasons. First, the book helps to build an awareness that resource constraints will never allow the whole world to live as we do in the West - there simply are not enough resources. Elites perhaps, but not 90% of the world's population based upon tillable land under acreage, water, oil consumption, copper, etc. Second, as a mining investor, I enjoyed the second chapter about reserves, resource base, and resource life. The emphasis on water was quite helpful as well - another growing area of scarcity. One critique of the author's assumptions - he believes that the only time free markets are not in effect for commodities is when cartels try to squeeze prices upward. What happens when cartels squeeze prices downward, as in the case of the Federal Reserve (and other Central Banks) when they suppress the gold price?

Chapter 3 deals with the Life Cycle Assessment, looking at the total amount of energy consumed in the production of materials, manufacture, use, and disposal. For my purposes, I am primarily concerned with energy consumption (embodied energy), but certainly those of a greener bent are welcome to theorize about the impact of carbon outputs from this material as well.

Chapter 4 covers recycling - how to evaluate the economics of scrap recycling, packaging, and industrial design.

Chapter 5 is about the "Long Reach of Legislation" and discusses why some believe it's necessary to promote various trading regimes designed to internalize via price signals the negative externalities associated with consumption. In other words, according to the beliefs of the author, Cap and Tax is a necessity, and simply passing a law that says "Thou shalt not pollute" is not sufficient.

Chapter 6 deals with Ecodata - Values, Source and Precision. This chapter delves into the specifics of various materials, and how much carbon and MJ/kg each of them throw off. I was surprised and delighted to find that silver has a much smaller carbon footprint than any of the other precious metals by a factor of more than 20:1.

Chapter 7 is about Eco-Audits and Eco-Audit Tools. This chapter centers on specific products, such as an electric kettle, coffee maker, a portable space heater, auto bumpers, and the payback over time of a wind turbine.

Chapter 8, Selection Strategies, helps engineers to decide the criteria for making informed decisions and tradeoffs of various materials. Chapter 9 is about eco-informed materials choices, and goes into specifics on heating and cooling and transport. Chapter 10 is about sustainability, living on renewables. Chapter 11 provides a grand overview of future trends. Chapter 12 has profiles of specific materials, covering density, price, mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. There is also a list of uses for each, and various ecoproperties.

Overall, this was a useful and educational book. To list a few shortcomings - there was definitely a lack of emphasis on Peak Oil, though it was implied on page 33. There was also a lack of problem sets with answers, which is designed to make you buy the software, which I assume is how the publisher really cleans up.

This book earns four stars.

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