Sustainability Language

Strategy, Targets & Performance Management

Eco-efficiency

The WBCSD's 1992 management concept: creating more value with less environmental impact — producing more with fewer resources and less waste.

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Definition

Eco-efficiency is a management concept defined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (1992) as being achieved by the delivery of competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impacts and resource intensity throughout the life cycle to a level at least in line with the Earth's estimated carrying capacity. In short: creating more value with less impact, measurable as a ratio of value created to environmental load.

References

WBCSD

WBCSD definition and history

Overview

What it means

Doing more with less — the efficiency strategy of sustainable business, in contrast to sufficiency strategies that question volume itself.

How it is used

Companies apply eco-efficiency to energy, water and material productivity; it underpins cleaner production programmes and intensity targets, and is critiqued by degrowth scholars for enabling rebound effects.

Why it matters

Eco-efficiency was the founding vocabulary of business sustainability and remains the logic behind most corporate resource-productivity programmes.

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