Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Eco-efficiency is a term created by the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development (WBCSD, 2013) and has been used since 1992 in its current sense. The
aspects and criteria for eco-efficiency are the following:
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Reduction of material intensity of goods or services;
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Reduction of energy intensity of goods or services;
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Reduction of environmental pollution, the use of and emissions from hazardous
chemical substances and products;
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Life cycle thinking: production, use and waste phases should be equally considered,
materials and products should be in a high position in the waste hierarchy, they
must be reusable and recyclable;
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Durable products;
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Minimum use of renewable and nonrenewable resources;
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Increased service intensity of goods and services;
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Increased resource productivity.
Innovation and sustainability are the key elements to ensure high eco-efficiency of
products and services (see also Chapter 11).
Economic efficiency assessment is a comparative tool based on real expenditures
and prices. It takes into account all possible direct and indirect expenditures and ben-
efits. These costs cover investment and maintenance of the risk management measure
and the risk reduction technology. The benefits include better environmental and health
quality, social welfare, better land quality, and land uses compared with the previous
ones. In addition to the economic/monetary benefits of an industrial technology, its
environmental and social costs and benefits should also be considered and the two
should balance each other. The environmental, social and economic benefits of an envi-
ronmental technology (e.g., soil remediation) should compensate its monetary costs.
To be able to sum up all these, the values of the environmental and human health and
social well-being should be expressed as a monetary value or should become aggre-
gable otherwise. There are trials for data collection and evaluation to determine the
value of human and ecosystem health, provisions and services and evaluate human
(and some other species) life, but in addition to the technical problems, there are ethi-
cal and moral obstacles caused mainly by the socio-economic differences in the global
regions. Nevertheless, a common ground would be necessary to be able to include all
important factors into the evaluation of the alternatives and select the less risky and
most beneficial one. Such a quantitative tool has not yet been developed, but intensive
research is going on to establish a uniform system for the evaluation of human health
and ecosystems.
Social efficiency is even more ambiguous than environmental efficiency; the inven-
tory is less developed and completed, the value of the goods, services and human
well-being can only be partly expressed in a quantitative way. Environmental man-
agement measures aiming at improving the local environment have generally positive
impacts on the social environment. Locally, the direct impacts dominate, and the eval-
uation is mainly based on the local social indicators such as employment, services,
housing, and human well-being. Regional and global social impacts generally include
high uncertainties because the effects occur indirectly and the complex mechanisms of
money and market interfere.
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