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The science of applying the principles of design and engineering in a way that promotes positive economic and social development while reducing negative effects on the environment with the main aim of fostering sustainable community development, is known as sustainable engineering. This mission is mainly accomplished by way of efforts to design, redesign, and retrofit the current systems based on an evaluation of the production quality, existing operations, and the functional shortages that can possibly interfere with any of the sustainable processes.

Sustainable engineering practices can be applicable to a number of different industries such as new and existing construction, manufacturing, transportation, energy systems, environmental remediation and waste management. Simply put, any industry that uses up resources or expends energy can greatly benefit from responsible sustainable community development. Talking of existing energy systems, industrial processes, and buildings, this is where environmental and civil engineers who are trained and experienced in sustainable engineering will basically review and pinpoint resource and energy usage over a given period of time so that they can evaluate performance and function.

This will greatly help in sustainability planning and also function as a benchmark for comparison evaluation between same structures or systems. The engineer can then be in a good position to look for an ideal sustainability strategy that will enhance performance and function say for example by pinpointing and prioritizing measures that will encourage sustainability and minimize the heavy dependence on non-renewable resources. As a result, this will mean that the overall profitability will greatly increase thanks to the savings on the costs of operations and maintenance.

Sustainability planning may also expect the engineer in question to suggest and create awareness on necessary alterations to the existing construction or design so that the sustainability strategies can be effectually implemented. New development and construction is the other issue for sustainable community development. Actually, it is very much easy to see the benefits of sustainable engineering when designing a project from scratch, so to speak. Additionally, the costs of operations and savings will be realized sooner simply because of the mere fact that putting in place sustainable systems at the starting point enhances not only the performance but also the life cycle of the constructional or equipment materials involved from the first day.

Some of the possible recommendations about sustainable design which a sustainability engineer is likely to suggest and create awareness is wind and solar-powered lighting, cooling systems, heating, geothermal construction, waste heat and waste water recovery systems, among many other initiatives considered to be green. Despite the fact that sustainable engineering is a universal movement that has a global following and community that puts into effect practices that go beyond environmental restoration and conservation, today, sustainable engineering has become so much in demand that some universities and colleges are now offering graduate programs in this engineering field with the aim of fostering sustainable community development.

The World Engineering Partnership for Sustainable Development (WEPSD) and the World Commission on Environment and Development are two bodies that encourage sustainable community development by encouraging world peace, human rights preservation and biodiversity for the sake of future generations.