Eric J. Beckman, George M. Bevier Professor of Engineering &

Co-Director, Mascaro Sustainability Initiative, presented to an interdisciplinary set of students about how green design has, over the past decade, become very much a part of the toolkit for those creating the next generation of products and services. This has become the case for those of us who work at the molecular level (chemists) as well as those who operate at length scales of meters (architects). At the same time, today’s green designers face some substantial challenges if we want to continue, or even enhance, the pace at which green design advances. For example, while much attention is focused on green material design, it is often the additive package to materials (e.g., flame retardants, plasticizers, preservatives) rather than the material itself that causes environmental issues. Additives are produced, by and large, outside the US, and additive design is not considered a terribly glamorous field, meaning that progress to date has been slow. Moving to longer length scales, while improvements in new home construction have allowed for dramatic drops in energy usage, the means by which the energy load of existing homes is reduced have not changed measurably in decades, despite the fact that these existing homes (and commercial buildings) consume a sizable fraction of our nation’s electricity. This talk presents a number of pressing issues for today’s students of green design, showing how collaborations between disparate disciplines will be needed to make significant breakthroughs.