Agribusiness sectors have evolved to a highly diversified level, the fertilizer being their main interest. These products are composed of macronutrients and micro ones essential to life. Zinc is an essential micronutrient, and it is present in fertilizers as zinc oxide. The present work is concerned with assessing, from the sustainable development viewpoint, the entire chain of production and transportation of zinc oxide. It is intended to establish an ecological audit of ZnO by the CES EduPack® software in six different scenarios. The scenario composed only of recycled material for furnace feeding was the one that spent the least energy of all and had the lowest carbon footprint. However, a scenario composed only of pure zinc was the one that spent more energy and had the highest carbon footprint. Transport was the highest consumer of energy and carbon footprint in all scenarios.

Theories in the educational area are constantly evolving. Learning theories, knowledge images and competencies are ideas frequently used in teaching; this is not different in engineering education curricula. Many computational resources that help education are now available, and one of them is Ansys Granta EduPack®, a tool that aids engineering students in materials selection, among other activities. Even though this may be especially useful, the language used may cause some difficulties. The influence of using this software in both languages, English and Portuguese, was investigated with two groups of students attending Metallic Materials from an undergraduate mechanical engineering course at Centro Universitário FEI. They were monitored for one semester to study the development of their competencies by using learning theories and knowledge images. This software was translated into Brazilian Portuguese and was used in laboratory classes, allowing both the analysis of the influence of the language on the development of competencies and the knowledge acquired throughout the semester. This was based on what students said, and it was noticed that the translated version has its advantages, allowing the students to focus on the assignment proposed and on the usage of the knowledge acquired, even those who are English fluent. It was also found that the use of different tools is necessary for the development of competencies.