Industrial Engineer's Role in Reducing Pollution

Reducing pollution, as everyone knows, is a big issue when it comes to the environment in today's world. As it relates to engineering, the only field that people tend to correlate with reducing pollution would be environmental engineering. Although environmental engineers make up a large part of it, industrial engineers are emerging as one of the front-runners when it comes to different fields that are implementing ways to reduce pollution.

(www.earth.columbia.edu)

Pollution is a wide-spread issue and no matter how many policies you enforce to reduce the issue, there will always be room for improvement. Industrial engineers daily job usually consists of removing wastes in processes to make systems more efficient. They are more concerned with internal waste and not so much with external waste. Some examples of external waste would be extra paper or chemicals used just to make something more efficient. With changing times, industrial engineers are having to implement more ways to reduce waste in the environment into their daily life.

Multiple government agencies enforce policies upon businesses to regulate wastes produced. They wave fines over their head in hopes of forcing them to comply but motivation is the key factor to getting any sort of improvement. People need to have internal motivation to want to do something as opposed to being forced to do something, Trying to reduce pollution increases costs for businesses, which goes against everything an industrial engineers is taught which is to reduce costs. Processes are designed without any regard to the amount of waste that it produces. To an industrial engineer, reducing waste is considered non-value-added because there need to be methods to prevent waste entirely rather than just to control it.  Preventing pollution is a greater investment because if less of it exists, the amount of money that is used to control it decreases. This is why industrial engineers need to focus on eliminating waste instead of just trying to control it. This can be achieved by industrial engineers by taking a look at altering the sources of where the wastes are coming from. Other ways industrial engineers can be more environmentally friendly are as follows; they can design facilities that the environmental impact is at a minimum, optimize flow of material and personnel in and out of departments because it will naturally decrease the waste produced by reducing energy consumption, using environmentally friendly and reusable packaging when it comes to materials handling systems, and by implementing Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM) policies. 

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In conclusion, pollution is huge issue in today's society and preventing pollution is a necessity in an industrial setting. The biggest factor in prevention is motivating people to comply with policies and go above and beyond those policies. Engineers have a big part in reducing pollution and industrial engineers, as discussed above, are emerging as one of the front-runners in reducing wastes. 

Reference: www.northeastern.edu