Eco-Efficiency

Eco-efficiency combines techniques that enhance the productivity of natural resources, foster environmental protection, and employ renewable, alternative processes that are cost-competitive with older technologies. It serves both people and business, allowing for healthy growth without damaging the environment or burdening our economy with useless waste. This is accomplished, in part, by ending reliance on petroleum and the traditional manufacturing methods associated with it.

The principles of eco-efficiency are directed toward raising the sustainability of goods and services while maintaining price competitiveness.  This includes a reduction in the materials and energy used in production, enhanced product durability, reduced production of toxic materials, and an emphasis on the use of recyclable materials and renewable resources.

In addition to traditional concerns of pollution and the destruction of non-renewable resources, eco-efficiency also addresses the social impact of traditional manufacturing practices. It addresses issues such as demographic trends, fighting poverty and global health.

It also seeks to protect fragile environments such as rainforests, prevent deforestation, and protect biological diversity. The eco-efficiency movement anticipates worldwide cooperation among governments, business, universities and financial institutions to arrive at a new way of living on Earth.

Chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough, in their ground-breaking book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (2002), describe how our current production systems are designed to produce problematic and uneconomical waste. They argue that, through intelligent design, we can eliminate the very notion of “waste” by emulating natural systems, such as a growing plant, that ends its lifecycle by returning all its resources back to the ecological system.

This “cyclical mode,” which nature employs, contrasts with our current “linear mode” wherein we use feedstock materials to produce our desired product, and due to the design of the process, we are left with material we can no longer use, which may actually be toxic, and which entails disposal costs.

So in addition to the social advantages of the cyclical model, such as not producing toxins, the authors argue that waste is expensive. Systems designed to eliminate it will have cost advantages as well.

The movement away from petroleum-based products and toward renewable materials and sustainable processes is a crucial step toward eco-efficiency. The Renewable Corporation and its affiliated companies are dedicated to the production and implementation of eco-efficient products, processes, and services. It is the cornerstone of our business.