ABSTRACT
Over the last 25 years there has been an increasing awareness of the potential for business to have constructive and leading roles in the global movement towards a sustainable economy. This movement asks business leaders to reimagine the association between the environment (waste reduction) and production costs. Rather, waste reduction when conceived as ‘producing more for less,’ can be a profitable business in and of itself. The chapter explores these ideas by presenting two conceptual approaches used to analyze the required changes to management and production systems; namely, eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness. Despite the similarity in names, the two approaches are quite different. In particular, eco-efficiency can be attained with only minor changes to the existing production and management practices; in fact eco-efficiency can often be achieve by a well-executed retrofitting of existing system of operations. In contrast, eco-effectiveness asks firms to manage their waste as a closed loop waste management system, as is true for nature. The theoretical foundation of eco-effectiveness is ‘industrial ecology,’ a recently emerged discipline. The ultimate goal of eco-effectiveness is simply zero waste. The chapter illustrates the rewards and challenges of both eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness through several case studies. In the end the chapter emphasizes the potential contributions of business to the environmental sustainability movement.
