Integrating Sustainability Education in Chemical Engineering

A systematic approach to embedding sustainability principles throughout chemical engineering education equips graduates with the mindset and skills needed to address 21st-century environmental and social challenges.

The chemical engineering profession faces unprecedented challenges. As the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals emphasize the urgent need for sustainable consumption and production patterns, chemical engineers must be equipped to design processes that consider environmental and social impacts alongside technical performance (1). The profession’s influence extends across industries — from energy production to pharmaceutical manufacturing — making sustainability education not just beneficial, but essential.

This educational imperative has gained institutional recognition. The higher education accreditation board ABET has a student outcome requirement that explicitly requires consideration of “public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors” (2). Similarly, AIChE’s Code of Ethics emphasizes engineers’ responsibility to “hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public and protect the environment” (3).

Despite this recognition, most chemical engineering programs still treat sustainability as an elective or minor topic. This approach is insufficient for developing the comprehensive mindset needed to address complex environmental and social challenges. The authors, who are chemical engineering educators at Columbia Univ. and Northeastern Univ., have demonstrated that sustainability principles can be systematically integrated throughout curricula without requiring complete program restructuring (4).

This article presents a practical framework for implementing sustainability education across chemical engineering curricula, supported by validated assessment methods and real-world examples from multiple institutions. The goal is to motivate educators and inform partners in industry on how sustainability can be woven throughout chemical engineering training to help develop more sustainably-minded engineers...