Eco

Eco-efficiency and Beyond
Towards the Sustainable Enterprise

Edited by Jan-Dirk Seiler-Hausmann, Christa Liedtke and Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker

January 2004 | 248pp | 234 x 151 mm
Hardback | ISBN 1 874719 60 8 | £40.00 US$75.00

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Introduction
Jan-Dirk Seiler-Hausmann, Christa Liedtke, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker

1. Thinking about sustainable production and services in a globalised world
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker

BUSINESS-AS-USUAL, it is widely accepted, will exceed the Earth’s carrying capacity in an alarmingly short space of time. In simple terms, we need to learn to use the world’s rapidly depleting resources in a significantly more efficient manner. Practical and readily adopted solutions are needed now. Eco-efficiency—or ‘produce more with less’—is achieved when goods and services satisfy human needs, increase the quality of life at competitive prices and when environmental impacts and resource intensity are decreased to a degree that keeps them within the limits of Earth’s expected carrying capacity. Eco-efficiency—a term first proposed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in 1992—is a management approach that allows businesses to carry out environmental protection measures from a market-oriented point of view, with the aim of illustrating that ecology and the economy do not need to be a contradiction. Indeed, eco-efficiency has been portrayed as a win–win—for both business and the environment.

This book, which developed out of two conferences on eco-efficiency held in Düsseldorf in 1998 and 2001, is edited by Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and his team from the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, one of the world’s leading research programmes on resource productivity. The aim is not simply to explain the past and present of eco-efficiency but to look forward to and encourage a future where the comprehensive take-up of the concept by business, government and consumers could lead to innovation on a grand scale and the possibility of a giant leap beyond towards overall sustainability.

There have been considerable achievements to date. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index, which aims to list the most sustainable corporations for investors, includes companies such as BASF, Climatex, Henkel and Matushita/Panasonic (all represented in this book), who are implementing eco-efficiency measures. A number of political initiatives have also been formed. In December 2001, the German government suggested a National Sustainability Strategy to measure Germany’s sustainable development. While this not yet an accepted political target or even law, it shows that politics is moving toward binding targets for increasing efficiency.

Eco-Efficiency and Beyond collects together the leading thinkers on the topic and aims to illustrate not only that the concept should be part of every business strategy but that it is a key trigger for innovation. Innovation cuts through paradoxes. It is the creation of solutions to conflicting demands. Flying in a vacuum gave us rockets and satellites; switching electrons through insulators gave us Silicon Valley and the digital age. Sustainable development presents a similar field of paradoxical innovation forces: i.e. provide affordable products and services for the growing unmet needs of the world population while reducing environmental impacts.

This book is the definitive collection on eco-efficiency and will be required reading for business, government, NGOs and academicians.

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Contents

Introduction
Jan-Dirk Seiler-Hausmann, Christa Liedtke, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker

1. Thinking about sustainable production and services in a globalised world
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Member of the German Parliament, former Chair of the Bundestag Select Committee on Globalisation

2. Promoting the life-cycle economy—time to act!
Jacqueline Aloisi de Larderel, United Nations Environment Programme, Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, France

3. The next sources of innovation
Claude Fussler, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Switzerland

4. Sustainable politics
Jan-Dirk Seiler-Hausmann, Wuppertal Institute, Germany

5. Germany’s Sustainable Development Strategy
Hans Martin Bury, Member of German Parliament; German Minister of State for Europe

6. The German Council for Sustainable Development
Volker Hauff, Chair of the German Council for Sustainable Development

7. Think–communicate–act. Econsense Forum for Sustainable Development: A German business initiative
Jürgen Zech, former member of the Board of Gerling and spokesperson for econsense, Germany

8. Launching the ISS Sustainable Development
Raymond van Ermen, European Partners for the Environment, Belgium

9. Sustainable business development
Michael Kuhndt, Wuppertal Institute, Germany

10. Deloitte Sustainability Reporting Scorecard
Markus Lehni, Deloitte & Touche, Global Environment and Sustainability Services, Switzerland

11. Sustainability management? Don't bother! Practical steps for bringing sustainability into core management practice
Peter Zollinger, SustainAbility, UK

12. Sustainable accounting initiatives in Japan: pilot projects of material flow cost accounting
Katsuhiko Kokubu, Kobe University, Japan;Michiyasu Nakajima, Kansai University, Japan

13. The BASF eco-efficiency method as a sustainable decision-making tool
Andreas Kicherer, BASF AG, Germany

14. Toward sustainable products and services
Christa Liedtke, Wuppertal Institute, Germany

15. Climatex^® Lifeguard™ upholstery fabrics: chronicle of a sustainable product redesign
Albin Kälin, Rohner Textil AG, Switzerland; Alain Rivière and Ralf Ketelhut, EPEA Internationale Umweltforschung GmbH, Germany; Michael Braungart, EPEA Internationale Umweltforschung GmbH, Germany, and McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, LLC, USA

16. Eco-effective design of products and production systems: eight theses on methodological and institutional prerequisites
Michael Braungart, EPEA Internationale Umweltforschung GmbH, Germany and McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, LLC, USA; Alain Rivière and Ralf Ketelhut, EPEA Internationale Umweltforschung GmbH, Germany

17. Efforts in the electronics industry toward creating a recycling-based society
Nobuhisa Itoh, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd, Japan

18. Ten years of sustainability at Henkel: innovative products as basis for long-term business success
Rainer Rauberger and Michaela Raupach, Henkel, Corporate Sustainability Management/Reporting and Stakeholder Dialogue, Germany

19. Toward sustainable banks and insurance companies
Thomas Orbach and Timo Busch, Wuppertal Institute, Germany

20. The challenge of sustainability for financial institutions
Paul Clements-Hunt, Head of Unit, UNEP Finance Initiatives, Switzerland

21. Sustainability: the new paradigm in value-based corporate management
Hanns Michael Hoelz, Global Head of Sustainable Development, Deutsche Bank

22. Can pension funds drive sustainable development?
Inge Schumacher, UBS Global Asset Management, Socially Responsible Investments, Switzerland

Bibliography
Author biographies
Abbreviations
Useful websites
Index

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About the editors

	Jan-Dirk Seiler-Hausmann was project leader in the Working Group ‘Eco-efficiency and Sustainable Enterprises’ at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. Together with Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, he published a collection of essays on eco-efficiency (Ökoeffizienz: Management der Zukunft; Birkhäuser, 1999). He organised the international conference ‘From Eco-efficiency to Sustainability in Enterprises’ held alongside the ENVITEC trade fair in Düsseldorf in 2001. The proceedings of the conference are documented in a book of the same name published with Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and Björn Stigson. In 2001–2002 he spent six months as a visiting researcher at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Japan before joining sustainability communications at Henkel.
	Dr Christa Liedtke, born in 1964, studied biology and theology. Since 1993, she has been working as project leader at the Wuppertal Institute, Division for Material Flows and Structural Change, advancing in 1995 to team leader for product-related material flow analysis and sustainable management systems. Since 2000 she has been working as head of the Working Group ‘Eco-efficiency and Sustainable Enterprises’, now ‘Research Group Sustainable Production and Consumption’, which is concerned with developing workable concepts, tools and management systems that support economic, ecological and social sustainability in industries, enterprises and product lines
	Dr Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker is a member of the German parliament, and, since 2002, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. He has also been chairman of the Parliamentary Study Commission ‘Globalisation of the Economy: Challenges and Answers’ (2000–2002), and, previously, president of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy from 1991 to 2000. He is a member of the Club of Rome and of the ILO Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation. With Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, he wrote the landmark book, Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use (Earthscan Publications, 1997).