Greening the Industrial Facility

This book fills a critical gap as a textbook and reference book on the comprehensive environmental impacts of industrial organizations. It is intended for both upper-level undergraduate and beginning graduate students in environmental studies or engineering, and, more broadly, for practicing managers and engineers seeking to improve industrial processes. Nineteen chapters, each focusing on an industrial sector, from resource extraction through fabrication and manufacturing to recycling, evaluate the sector’s inherent "potential to pollute" by providing an overview of typical sector operations and their environmental implications. Beyond outlining and providing frameworks for assessing industrial facilities’ contemporary interactions with the environment (energy and water use, material throughput and hazard, and pollution potential), the book provides forward-looking analyses concerning how new technologies and practices can transform environmentally degrading effects of industry. It also addresses how managers can navigate these changes and move their industrial organizations towards environmental sustainability over the long term. The pedagogical approach emphasizes facility visits and subsequent reports that make use of the book’s analytical tools.

Topics in the book include the following:

-Key topics in greening the industrial facility

-Regulatory compliance

-Pollution prevention

-Life-cycle assessment of products, processes, and facilities

-Sustainability assessments

-Industrial sector analysis (19 sector-specific chapters from Agriculture to Textiles)

-The future of industry and environmental issues