Our modern world faces many challenges and globally governments are tackling sustainability and carbon reduction targets through the introduction of legislation. With many sectors striving to improve their green credentials, there is an ever-increasing need for a readily accessible, certified and endorsed source of information. The need to move to a circular economy is clear and our concept is a new one-stop ‘Sustain Our Planet’ Powerapp forum that will deliver design details and data for the most sustainable products, materials and approaches available, supporting truly responsible and purposeful solutions. Typically, new project research requires accessing different data sources which can conflict with commercial pressures of a business and available time to do this. By partnering with approved suppliers and being accredited to professional and government bodies ‘Sustain Our Planet’ will host a series of ‘Certified’ material and application sheets for all sectors, listing their most sustainable materials, products and best practice approaches – and the impact these choices will have on the environment. The app will be more than another reference site. It will be unique, giving engineer’s access to a trusted source of accredited and certified material, product and application data. It will create a much-needed voice and forum for sustainable engineering - allowing for discussion groups, committees and the sharing of best practice across the community and educational institutions. Collaboration will be encouraged and there is potential for new entrepreneurs to invest in the best solutions. In support of SDG12 the site will be funded by those manufacturers accredited to the site but to remain independent no one manufacturer will be promoted over another. Why an app? We are all comfortable working with apps from our mobile devices. This is certainly true of today’s engineers who are busy, on site and need instant access to the information.

I am interested in views on overcoming the commercial aspects of a business and its shareholders versus an ethically sustainable solution and how we drive decisions towards 'Best ethical' solution rather than just best. As engineers we will want to offer the best solution but for the future this is the mindset we need to change and start discounting solutions that are not a best ethical fit earlier in the design process? There is a clear appetite for change in most leading companies in respect of ethical supply chains and sustainable factories and this is great to see but how many are looking at ethical design from the CAD design up ? - I work in an engineering environment where we have a great history and successful ways of designing and delivering a new product to market and much of this is innovative - however we still use traditional materials - steel , cast iron, plastics etc which we know are some cause for concern. We work hard on reducing our emissions and have a target of net neutral of 2030 - but a lot of this is driven through better energy / travel and company fleet vehicle choice. Has anyone seen examples of this type of ethical change in design processes and how was this environment created ?. And beyond this how do we convince customers to come along for the journey as well - Its hard to get quality and process engineers to be the first to make a change in their factories just 'in-case' it fails. Anyway just a question and food for thought maybe ?