This free online sustainability course explains how environmental engineers align technology with the natural world.

Environmental engineering is the development of processes and infrastructure for the supply of clean water, the control of pollution, the protection of the environment and the improvement of the ecosystem. The objective of an environmental engineer is to align technology with the natural environment to protect it from the negative impacts of human activities and ensure sustainability. Environmental engineers thus utilize specialist tools to design technical solutions and treatment facilities to solve environmental pollution problems.

This sustainability course discusses how environmental engineers design control and treatment systems that protect us from the effects of pollution. We address global environmental pollution issues and draw on the principles of microbiology, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering to explain how engineers mitigate the effects of human activity on the natural world. We also study water and wastewater treatment and discuss water quality parameters, water treatment, the composition of wastewater and wastewater treatment processes.

The course then moves on to air pollution control. We lay out the types of air pollutants and discuss the impacts of air pollution, air pollution modelling and dispersion processes and air pollution monitoring and management. We also examine solid waste management and outline the environmental impacts of poor waste management, the classification of solid waste and a sustainable approach to solid waste management. Finally, we examine recycling and resource recovery, anaerobic digestion and biogas generation, waste minimization and source separation techniques used to sort waste. Sign up for this sustainability course to learn how environmental engineers use their ingenuity to create powerful solutions to the environmental problems created by human activity.