Sustainable engineering

Sustainable engineering refers to the integration of social, environmental, and economic considerations into product, process and energy systems design methods. Additionally, sustainable engineering encourages the consideration of the complete product and process lifecycle during the design effort. The intent is to minimize the total of the environmental impacts across the entire lifecycle while simultaneously maximizing the benefits to social and economic stakeholders.

http://www.rit.edu/~w-ptgrd/grad/1575.php3