Title: Review of methodology and application of eco-efficiency
Abstract: Eco-efficiency,as an effective tool which integrates the sustainability into the development planning and management initiatives at company and regional level,combines the economic value and environmental value.Although there are several definitions of Eco-efficiency,`Creating more value with less impacts',defined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development(WBCSD),is generally accepted.Compared with concepts such as Factor X and Ecological Footprint(EF),Eco-efficiency mainly focuses on integrating the environmental impact and economic value,while Factor X and EF concern more on the environmental impact.Cleaner Production also concerns about both environmental performance and economic performance.However,Eco-efficiency takes economic value in high priority whereas Cleaner Production emphasizes on the environmental impact.There are some methods for calculating the Eco-efficiency.Value-Impact ratio method is commonly used,which defines Eco-efficiency as the ratio of economic value of product(service) to its environment impacts.Since the goal and scope for Eco-efficiency analysis varies,the calculation methods for both economic value of product or service and related environmental impact has not come to an agreement.Additionally,some alternative methods like DEA model,Eco-cost/Value Ratio have also been applied in some cases.Eco-efficiency is applied widely at company,industrial and regional levels.At the company level,Eco-efficiency application methods vary according to the scales of the companies.At the industrial level,Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) is widely used because of its objective method to weight various environmental impacts.Eco-efficiency calculations for regional industrial systems have also been developed,especially in the product recycling systems.Research and application of Eco-efficiency in China have made progress in the last few years.On the basis of introduction of foreign theory system,promotion of circular economy development by Eco-efficiency theory and methodology has become one of the hottest topics.Applications of Eco-efficiency at company level have also developed rapidly.The analysis of Eco-efficiency theory and applications shows that applications at the company level emphasize on the practicability,while the ones at the regional and industrial levels have a trend of more comprehensive and more complicated methods.How to reasonably integrate these two methods will be an important direction of Eco-efficiency theory.Evaluation of time-scale effects on the economic value and environment impact,improvement of DEA model,and development of Eco-efficiency methodology that suits to small and medium-sized enterprises,are the important issues to be solved.Additionally,Eco-efficiency application in waste recycling systems is also one of the hot points of research.
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 7
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