CEST2025

Engineering is the driving force for sustainable development, a vital element for quality of life and longevity of humanity. Sustainability presupposes economic development by ensuring both compliance with environmental standards and social cohesion. Closing the loop between sustainability and engineering, thus promoting the concept of Sustainability Engineering (SusEng), involves integrating sustainable alternatives/solutions into engineering design, processes, and application in order to address environmental, social, and economic challenges simultaneously. On this basis, SusEng focuses on the development of practical solutions to promote sustainable development i.e. circularity of resources for sustainability, thus it depicts a strong practical dimension. However, these practical solutions need to be the output of an equilibrium between economic, environmental and societal considerations, thus SusEng needs a balanced decision support making towards consensus and realistic implementation of the practical solutions promoted. Addressing and balancing environmental, social, and economic challenges simultaneously is based on sustainable design. This is the main future perspective for the research community to bridge the gap between sustainability and engineering and it is characterized by a decalogue (ten commandments): to promote, support and if possible maximize (i) environmental friendliness, (ii) rational use of resources, (iii) renewability, (iv) processes interconnectivity, (v) life cycle thinking and assessment, (vi) assembly to disassembly, (vii) sustainable costing (both internal and external costs), (viii) optimal time of life cycle, (ix) preventive waste management and (x) social benefits. However, the research society has to overcome important challenges in order to achieve the engineering framework transformation, from traditional engineering's focus on economic efficiency and technical solutions to a more holistic approach that considers the social and environmental consequences of engineering ventures. Main challenges to overcome are the lack of interdisciplinary amalgamation, the tools and approaches to balance economic, environmental and societal considerations and the lack of information to deploy holistic approaches, especially when Life Cycle Assessment is adopted. By addressing these challenges, view them as opportunities and embracing the decalogue of perspectives, engineering can play a vital role in creating a more sustainable future. On this basis, the “tale of two fields” may have a parallel happy end, both for engineering transformation and sustainable development.