Page 38 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

2.3 Business sustainability 33
minimization and recycling in the assembly line. Always indirectly, it was used in the
Brundtland report (1987), envisaging more resource efficiency and less pollution and mini-
mization of the irreversible negative impacts to society and the environment. However, its
formal appearance takes place in 1991 by the just-born WBCSD.
Eco-efficiency is a concept linking together the environmental and economic dimen-
sions and it is defined as doing more with less (McDonough and Braungart, 1998,
p. 2), as a firm’s economic profit in relation to its environmental impact (Schaltegger
and Sturm, 1990, 1992, 1998 as cited in Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002) or as maximizing
value while minimizing impact (WBCSD, 2002). However, Schmidheiny and Stigson
(2000), within their report on eco-efficiency for the WBCSD, argue that these are reduc-
tionist views and invite us to see eco-efficiency also as a concept that should prompt us
toward new production solutions not only within the firm’s framework, but also along
the whole value chain. Nevertheless, eco-efficiency is a largely criticized concept. First of
all, Welford (1997 as cited in Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002) and Schaltegger and Sturm
(1990, 1992, 1997 as cited in Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002) point out that eco-efficiency
is often used by businesses as a synonym of sustainability, whereas this is but one
measure among many of a broader concept.
Secondly, Gray and Milne (2002) argue that the absolute impact of each business on every
resource base should be aggregated in order to actually measure for environmental sustain-
ability. As a matter of fact, a company who can minimize its environmental damages is only
relatively sustainable, whereas, in absolute terms, the amount of damage produced by all
businesses together could still be unsustainable for the planet. Gray (2010) defines sustain-
ability as a systemic concept, which has to be considered at the eco-systemic level. The need
for absolute thresholds is also supported by Dyllick and Hockerts (2002), who affirm that
irreversibility, nonlinearity, and nonsubstitutability principles applied to natural capital
depletion make it unsustainable to only rely on eco-efficiency.
Young and Tilley (2006, p. 3) summarize this critique, defining eco-efficiency as an insuf-
ficient illusion of short-term relative improvements for a business willing to be truly sustain-
able. This illusion decreases the feeling of culpability and worry about the future without
actually solving the problems since, despite the relative improvements, resources and
nonrenewable energy sources continue being unsustainably used and ecosystems damaged,
and what does decrease is only the rate of depletion and deterioration (McDonough and
Braungart, 1998). Additionally, Gray and Bebbington (2000) argue the ineffectiveness of
eco-efficiency measures also comparing sustainability indicators at 5years of distance from
the first eco-efficiency initiatives taken at the Rio 1992 conference. Their results showed that
these indicators worsened during that 5year span. Furthermore, Gray and Milne (2002) doubt
that capitalistic businesses would be really interested in broadening efficiency to effectiveness
measures, meant as an absolute decrease in business, social, and environmental impacts, for
two main reasons. Firstly, this would probably imply a decrease in production undermining
the concepts of consumerism and, ultimately, of growth. Secondly, social disparities are a
fundamental capitalistic element.
Lastly, eco-efficiency, relating together only the economic and environmental dimensions,
does not take into account social aspects, thus forgetting an indispensable and integral part of
sustainability. This last argument is relatively common, as many businesses mean sustainabil-
ity as only related to the environment. This is partly due to the difficulties in measuring the
majority of social impacts.