Knowledge Center
Books
Sustainable Manufacturing
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage, by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston, Wiley, 2006, revised and updated in paperback 2009
The authors label the forward-thinking, green-friendly companies WaveMakers and set out to assess honestly their path toward environmental responsibility, and its impact on a company's bottom line, customers, suppliers and reputation.
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, North Point Press, 2002
The authors present a manifesto calling for a new industrial revolution, one that would render both traditional manufacturing and traditional environmentalism obsolete. The authors, an architect and a chemist, want to eliminate the concept of waste altogether, while preserving commerce and allowing for human nature.
The Necessary Revolution: How individuals and organizations are working together to create a sustainable world, by Peter M. Senge, Bryan Smith, Sara Schley, and Joe Laur, Doubleday Publishing, 2008
Business Week Review: "Senge and his co-authors grapple with the daunting environmental problems we face, and highlight innovative steps taken by individuals and corporations, often in partnership with global organizations such as Oxfam, toward a more sustainable world."
The Triple Bottom Line: How Today's Best-Run Companies Are Achieving Economic, Social and Environmental Success -- and How You Can Too, by Andrew W. Savitz and Karl Weber, Jossey-Bass, 2006
Financial Times:
A thoughtful guide for managers who are taking tentative steps towards sustainability or who are seeking a clearer path through the maze.
The ManuFuture Road: Towards Competitive and Sustainable High-Adding-Value Manufacturing, by Francesco Jovane, Engelbert, Westkämper, and David Williams, Springer; 2008
ManuFuture is a public/private European Union initiative that kicked off with the ManuFuture 2003 conference in Milan. This 261-page book reviews the ManuFuture model, strategic research agenda and its Vision 2020.
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Back Bay Books, 2008
Three top strategists show how leading-edge companies are practicing "a new type of industrialism" that is more efficient and profitable while saving the environment and creating jobs.
Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts, by Marc J Epstein, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008
A how-to guide for corporate leaders, strategists, academics, sustainability consultants, and anyone else with an interest in actually putting sustainability ideas into practice.
Sustainable Development in the Process Industries: Cases and Impact, by J. Harmsen and Joseph B. Powell, Wiley-AIChE, [April 2010]
Provides examples and cases studies by a collection of international authors, ranging from the petroleum industry to the water processing industry. Written for chemical engineers and students.
Handbook of Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing, Christian N. Madu editor, Springer, 2001
Specific chapters deal with sustainable manufacturing, recycling, eco-labelling, life cycle assessment, and ISO 14000 series of standards, as well as decision-making aspects of Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing.
Sustainable Product Design & Development
Design for Environment, Second Edition: A Guide to Sustainable Product Development: Eco-Efficient Product Development, by Joseph Fiksel, McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009
Drawing on the experiences of dozens of major corporations, this book offers a business rationale for developing sustainable products and processes. Learn how environmental innovation creates business value, and helps companies to meet global energy and environmental challenges.
Biodesign: The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies, by Stefanos Zenios, Josh Makower, Paul Yock, and Todd J. Brinton, Cambridge University Press, 2009
William Hawkins, Chairman and CEO of Medtronic: "This is a must read for device entrepeneurs. I only wish I had such a roadmap when I was starting out in my career. It is the Gray's Anatomy of device innovation."
Design for Environment, Second Edition: A Guide to Sustainable Product Development: Eco-Efficient Product Development, by Joseph Fiksel, McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009
An in-depth roadmap to sustainable product development Drawing on the experiences of dozens of major corporations, the author offers a business rationale for developing sustainable products and processes, as well as a comprehensive toolkit for practicing DFE in the context of product life-cycle management.
Ecological Design, Tenth Anniversary Edition, by Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan, Island Press, 2007
Since its initial publication in 1996, this book has been critically important in sparking dialogue and triggering collaboration across spatial scales and design professions in pursuit of buildings, products, and landscapes with radically decreased environmental impacts.
Sustainable by Design: Explorations in Theory and Practice, by Stuart Walker, Earthscan Publications, 2006
Explores the design process in the context of sustainability, and challenges conventional ways of defining, designing, and producing functional objects. Topics: personal design process, tacit knowledge, ephemeral design, experimental design, and the relationship between intellectual design criteria, physical expression, and aesthetic experience.
Designing Sustainable Packaging, by Scott Boylston, Laurence King Publishers, 2009
The book is organized into two distinct sections embracing first the theory, including many case studies, and then the practice of eco-friendly packaging design.
Sustainable Engineering
Advances in Life Cycle Engineering for Sustainable Manufacturing Businesses, Shozo Takata and Yasushi Umeda editors, Springer, 2007
Proceedings of the 14th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, June 11th-13th, 2007.
Life cycle engineering deals with technologies for shifting the industry from mass production and mass consumption paradigm to closed loop manufacturing paradigm. This subject is discussed from the various aspects, such as life cycle design, design for environment, reduce/reuse/recycle, life cycle assessment, and sustainable business models.
Sustainable Design: The Science of Sustainability and Green Engineering, by Daniel A. Vallero and Chris Brasier, Wiley, 2008
This is not a catalog of green products and how they work, but a course in the basics of thermodynamics, the science of pollution, and professional ethics. The authors begin by outlining a "synthovation/regenerative model" of design to replace the stepwise model of the past.