Eco-efficiency

In 1991, we in the then Business Council for Sustainable Development were
looking for a single concept, perhaps a single word, to sum up the business
end of sustainable development.
Finding no such concept on the lexicographer s shelf, we decided we
would have to launch an expression. After a contest and much agonizing,
we came up with eco-efficiency. In simplest terms, it means creating more
goods and services with ever less use of resources, waste and pollution.
After only a decade, eco-efficiency is everywhere. I just now did a web
search on one search engine, which offered me 6,149 more web sites about
eco-efficiency. Today, universities teach it; consulting companies charge you
to tell you how to do it; organizations like UNEP and the OECD hold
conferences about it. This shows that the world very much needs the
concept of eco-efficiency. And I am pleased that it is an open, expanding,
evolving concept.