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Green engineering is an environmental-focused branch of engineering that investigates the design, commercialization, and operation of processes, products, and systems with the primary objective of minimizing risks to human health and the environment from the earliest stages of conception through to eventual decommissioning ^[1][2][3]. It prioritizes pollution and waste prevention over end-of-pipe treatment, recognizing that avoiding the generation of hazardous byproducts is fundamentally more effective and cost-efficient than managing them after they have been created. This approach places strong emphasis on inherently safe material selection, reaction pathways, and process optimization that collectively reduce environmental burdens without compromising economic viability or technical performance criteria ^[2][3]. The discipline employs a cradle-to-grave life cycle framework to systematically assess and mitigate environmental impacts across all developmental stages—from raw material extraction and manufacturing through use, transportation, and end-of-life recovery or disposal—while maintaining that ecological considerations must be structurally integrated into engineering decision-making rather than applied as retrofitted controls after design completion ^[1][4][5]. As such, the term “green engineering” denotes a safety-by-design and inherently safer methodology applied to macro‑level engineering systems, which is conceptually and methodologically distinct from green chemistry—which focuses on molecular‑level innovations for safer chemicals and reactions—and also distinct from general corporate environmental compliance, which typically addresses regulatory conformance rather than proactive systemic redesign ^[6][7].