Sustainable Business and Industry

This foundational course is an introduction to funding, developing and implementing a successful business initiative in the domain of sustainability. The importance of building business value while improving environmental and social outcomes over the long run is a running theme throughout the course. The student is introduced to methods of implementing technologies and practices and how to measure the consequent social and environmental performance. Reporting and presenting social and environmental performance is given full treatment. This class reveals the most widely used concepts of sustainability and social responsibility in the modern business organization. Likely to be the most important change of the 21^st century, this overview addresses the essence of an emerging sustainable economy.

The class is targeted towards existing and aspiring engineers, operations managers and owners in small, midsize or large     businesses who are interested in promoting and adopting sustainable and socially responsible technologies and practices in into their designs and operations. This course is also appropriate for workers, supervisors, managers, directors and others who want to reduce their organization’s ecological footprint by increasing their environmental and social performance while increasing value and profit. People who are working with products and services in   commercial or industrial settings will benefit from the tools acquired during the course.

Those who are interested in benchmarking with the latest developments in energy, materials, ISO, transportation and distribution and vendors will benefit.

Lastly, the course content specifically addresses the financial   aspects of adopting alternative energy technologies. Starting with a simple pay back (ROI) the learner is exposed to several simple financial calculations such as present value, future value and return on investment .