A Curriculum for Life Cycle Engineering

It has been observed that 70 percent of product costs are decided at the design stage. With respect to the design of products and their impact upon the environment, it can be observed that if we get the design right, at the beginning, then environmental impacts can be reduced by an estimated 70%. Therefore, an awareness of product impact upon the environment, must be created at an early stage in undergraduate education.Such a course does not need to have a high mathematical content and can give undergraduate students exposure to information which can be used, in product design courses, as they progress through university. The content of such a course is suggested in this paper.