Welcome to Cal Poly's wiki for Sustainability in Integrated Circuits
This wiki aims to share information regarding sustainability issues related to integrated circuits, offering a forum for students to teach each other about sustainability and the electronics field.
Definitions of sustainability
Because humanity now consumes and pollutes the Earth’s resources faster than natural and human systems can replenish and clean them, we do not currently live in a sustainable manner [5]. More sustainable design might
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“Design systems that love all the children of all species for all time” [6]
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“The goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just
world, with clean air, soil, water, and power,
economically, equitably, ecologically, and
elegantly enjoyed.” [6]
In analyzing sustainability issues, it might prove helpful to consider Commoner’s laws of ecology, which sound unsurprisingly similar to laws of physics:
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Everything connects to everything else
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Everything must go somewhere
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Nature knows best and bats last
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There is no such thing as a free lunch [7].
Explain how experiment topics or applications related to the experiment foster or prevent sustainability [8]. Reference [9] and others on Blackboard™ provide helpful information. Consider issues related to Energy, Environment, Economics, and social or political Equity, four “E”s of sustainability.
What is your ecological footprint? or use another calculator.
The Earth Policy Institute has a plan:
Lester R. Brown, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Company) 2008,
The entire book and Excel files containing the book's data appear online: http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/Contents.htm
Ways to reduce carbon appear in a McKinsey report:
Jon Creyts, Anton Derkach, Scott Nyquist, Ken Ostrowski, Jack Stephenson, "Reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions: How much at what cost?," November 2007, p. 20, http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/Costcurves.asp
A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030 appears in Scientific American:
Jacobson and Delucchi, "A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030," November 2009, p. 58-65, The article explains how wind, water, and solar power can supply total global energy demand, thereby eliminating the need for fossil fuels.
References
[1] S. R. Euston and W. E. Gibson, “The Ethic of Sustainability,” Earth Ethics 6, 1995 p. 5-7. Available: http://www.iisd.org/sd/principle.aspx?pid=31&display=1. [Accessed September 19, 2010].
[2] The World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, chaired by Norwegian Prime-Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, 1987.
[3] G. Van de Kerk and A. R. Manuel, “A comprehensive index for a sustainable society: The SSI — the Sustainable Society Index,” Ecological Economics 66 (2-3), 2008 p. 228-242.
[4] Olaitan Ojuroye as cited in Paul L. Bishop, Pollution Prevention: Fundamentals and Practice Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2004 Fig. 14.1 p. 584.
[5] Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Current State and Trends, Volume 1, Eds. R. Hassan, R. Scholes, & N. Ash, Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2005, p. 827-838. “MA Findings Animated slides,” Available: http://www.maweb.org/en/SlidePresentations.aspx, [Accessed December 31, 2010]
[6] William McDonough, as quoted in “Waste = Food (An inspiring documentary on the Cradle to Cradle design concept)” Directed by Rob van Hattum, VPRO, The Netherlands, 2006. Available: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3058533428492266222. [Accessed September 1, 2008] Or http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/05/15/18416351.php.
[7] Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972, pp. 16-24.
[8] P. Hawken, A. Lovins, and L.H. Lovins, Natural Capitalism. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1999, pp. 49-50, 57-58. Available: http://www.natcap.org/images/other/NCchapter3.pdf [Accessed March 22, 2006].
[9] E. Williams, “Environmental impacts in the production of personal computers,” in Computers and the Environment: Understanding and Managing Their Impacts, R. Kuehr and E. Williams, Eds. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003, pp. 41-72.
Tips: To Use PBwiki
Jacobson, Mark Z. and Mark A. Delucchi (2009) A PATH TO SUSTAINABLE ENERGY BY 2030 .
Scientific American 2009, 58 - 65
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