Environmental regulations are tightening, resource extraction sites are nearing the end of their useful lives and must be cleaned up, and the list goes on. Environmental engineers are needed to take advantage of these career opportunities in order to ensure that human impact on the environment is sustainable. But exactly what is environmental engineering?
What is Environmental Engineering?
Environmental engineering entails both the protection of people from the environment and the protection of the environment from people. Environmental engineers, for example, help to protect people's health from the effects of pollution by designing pollution mitigation systems. When an environmental engineer, on the other hand, designs a system that treats waste to ensure that any spills into groundwater are less toxic, they are protecting the environment from the negative effects of humans.
Environmental engineers rely on knowledge from a variety of disciplines, including chemistry, geology, physics, biology, soil science, and others, to complete their work; it is a highly interdisciplinary field.
In which industries can environmental engineers work?
Environmental engineers work in a wide range of industries and for a wide range of companies due to the wide range of tasks they perform. In this section, we will look at some of the most common areas in which they work. Oil, mining, and forestry are all resource industries that have a significant environmental impact. Companies in these industries frequently hire environmental engineers to minimize the impact these industries have on the environment in order to comply with government environmental regulations. For example, in the mining industry, an environmental engineer may be hired to treat mine waste to make it less toxic.
Many environmental engineers go on to work for government agencies, assisting in the verification of companies' compliance with environmental regulations and, in some cases, developing environmental regulations themselves.
Public infrastructure projects, such as
dams and bridges, are another area where environmental engineers are needed. They are required to ensure that the environmental impact of these projects is kept to a minimum.
Environmental engineers are responsible for safeguarding the environment against human impact as well as safeguarding humans against any serious negative effects caused by the environment. They can work in the resource industry, government, education, research, environmental clean-up companies, and engineering consulting firms. Environmental engineers are more needed than ever as stricter environmental regulations take effect around the world and there is a greater need to clean up anything that has a significant impact on the environment.