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Several methods and ecological indicators are used in environmental economics to analyse the process of sustainable use of natural resources. These approaches are helpful in measuring and assessing the intensity (efficiency) of products' use and their impact on the environment. However, they do not sufficiently reflect the dynamics and improvements in the achieved outcomes as compared to the population (generation) growth. Moreover, they do not allow always analysing product changes on the world level. Referring to this existing gap, we conceptualise a new approachproduct generational dematerialisation (PGD) indicator, measuring product efficiency and population changes in relative values, and use it for investigating the dematerialisation for the world energy sector in the last 35 years. The indicator can be used as a new methodical tool to support and evaluate sustainable management policies on the enterprise, regional, national, and international level as well as for different resources, goods, and services.According to the US Geological Survey report about the use of natural resources (US Department of the Interior, 2009), the global water use during the past 25 years has remained rather stable, despite the population increase of 30%. This tendency is promising in terms of sustainable resource use. However, the methodology used for this investigation sets limits for analysing the respective years and periods in the time series. According to this methodology, the analysis of water use in the past ten years only would deliver the same results as for the previous 25 years including the population change. This would not be accurate or helpful in establishing trends. Thus, based on such a methodology, the efficiency assessment with regard to water use is inaccurate. This example reveals a need for creation of an indicator/methodology that would depict the level of product efficiency between two selected time periods characterised by different population growth. The possibility to assess higher product efficiency (called dematerialisation) and/or lower product efficiency (called materialisation) would help to design a more effective sustainable development policy.The idea of sustainable development refers to human activities in the field of environment, society and economy. As claimed by Carter (2004), humans are morally obliged to reduce the risk that our environmentally destructive behaviour poses for our well-being.This obligation can be fulfilled by means of several approaches. Many internationally acknowledged methods in the field of sustainable management policy are known, supporting the reduction of an excessive depletion of natural resources. All of them have the aim to improve product efficiency (i.e., dematerialisation) by means of, for example, cleaner production, eco-innovations, eco-design, low carbon economy, or industrial ecology. All of these concepts, as well as other approaches, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), factor X, ecological rucksack, or Material Flow Analysis, were developed in order t...

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In this paper the results of eco-innovation assessment were analyzed. Eco-innovations are considered as a solutions to minimize the negative impact on the environment to a greater degree than their previous counterparts. For this reason, the eco-innovations include in particular: pollution prevention, pollution control, cleaning technology, cleaner technology, environmentally improved products, loop closing, environmental management systems, waste management, environmental optimisation of production chain, system innovation. The big number of different indicators makes the decision-making in strategic management is difficult but needed. The own researches aimed at identification of leading trends in eco-innovation assessment and interest revealed by world companies. The own literature study on the results generated after application of eco-innovation indicators delivers significant knowledge on the international research trends. The subject of this work are 18 scientific papers published after the successful realization of eco-innovation projects. They have been analyzed in the context of 34 key findings. Among the identified and included into the analysis of criterion on assessment of interest in eco-innovations are: technological eco-innovations, management/system eco-innovation, process eco-innovation, external stakeholders role in supporting eco-innovation, competitive advantage as a benefit from eco-innovations. The results of researches realized in this paper show that eco-innovative technologies have the biggest importance for the world companies. Thus the present trends show increasing role of technological solutions when comparing with management/system and process solutions.