Eco efficiency, a path towards integrated resource management.

There is an increasing awareness that our economic growth comes at environmental costs that exceeds the global means. Depleting natural resources, rising costs, risks and impacts of resource extraction in increasingly difficult conditions, and environmental and climate change impacts from production and consumption call for a more sustainable use of environment and resources. Eco-efficiency responds to this call by optimizing value while minimizing resource use and environmental impacts, or in other words to do more with less. Eco-efficiency can be seen as a means for decoupling economic development (the goods) from environmental impact and waste generation (the bads), which is central in EU environmental and waste policy. It is thus a concept that could support further development and refinement of solid waste management systems in the EU in line with EU policies and with full consideration to the resource value in waste. Eco-efficiency promotes development from a linear, resource consuming and waste producing economy to a circular, resource conserving economy. Central to the eco-efficiency concept is identification of resource consuming and waste generating systems and processes at different scales. For example, in a city, a production company or at home, the mapping of inputs of materials, energy and water, emissions to air and water, and the outputs of waste of varying characteristics, and material and energy content allows detection of inefficiencies and wastage. It also enables identification of interfaces and interconnections between different processes and systems that can be exploited, with the overall goal to reduce the material and energy intensity, and the environmental and climate change impact of goods and services produced. Connectedness and interdependence are key aspects of eco-efficiency, as is the search for symbiotic and synergistic opportunities and links, mutually beneficial relationships and win–win solutions. This can be facilitated by co-location of industrial, waste management and waste water treatment facilities and related co-operations in exchange of materials, by-products and energy. Thames Gateway in London is one example where authorities have attempted to create a business environment that attracts complimentary waste management companies on a 25 ha former brownfield site. This co-location offer synergies and co-operation opportunities for different types of companies, and the approach has also proven effective when it comes to permitting, with comparably shorter approval times. From a solid waste management perspective, eco-efficiency can be seen as a tool for operationalising the waste hierarchy, and also as a concept that encourages a progress from integrated solid waste management with a focus on target compliance, to integrated resource management with exploitation of the full potential in waste prevention, process optimisation and waste utilization and recovery from both a materials and energy point of view. Prac-