Eco‐efficiency: inside BASF and beyond

Wall‐Markowski, Charlene A.; Kicherer, Andreas; Wittlinger, Rolf

doi:10.1108/14777830510583164

Cited by 13 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Following that, several definitions have been proposed (Huppes and Ishikawa, 2005), all of them focusing explicitly on a business level, aiming to support decision makers maximizing the business profit but at the same time reducing its environmental impact. Based on these definitions, several studies have been carried out, focusing on a company (Burritt and Schaltegger, 2001), business unit (Van Caneghem et al, 2010), or a specific product (Wall-Markowski et al, 2005;Michelsen et al, 2006).…”

Section: Meso-level Eco-efficiency Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systemic eco-efficiency assessment of meso-level water use systems

Angelis-Dimakis

Arampatzis

Assimacopoulos

2016

Journal of Cleaner Production

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Eco-efficiency has recently become an important concept of environmental decision making, serving as a policy objective and, if linked with resource efficiency, can be a measure of progress towards sustainability. The need for improving eco-efficiency leads to the challenge of identifying the most promising alternative solutions which improve both the economic and the environmental performance of a given system ("eco-innovations"). A methodological framework for the eco-efficiency assessment of a water use system at the meso level has been developed in the context of the EcoWater research project and consists of four distinct steps. The first step leads to a clear, transparent mapping of the system at hand and the respective value chain, while the second step provides the means to assess its eco-efficiency, following a life-cycle oriented approach using the midpoint impact categories. An important novelty is the distribution of economic costs/benefits and environmental pressures over different stages and stakeholders in the value chain. The third step includes the selection of innovative technologies, which are assessed in the last step and combined with midterm scenarios in order to determine the feasibility of their implementation. The proposed methodological framework has been applied to eight alternative water use systems, revealing all their environmental weaknesses and identifying potential opportunities for eco-efficiency improvement. At the same time, through the systemic approach all the involved actors are urged to cooperate in order to (a) propose and build innovative technological solutions that will improve the overall eco-efficiency of the system; and (b) make suggestions on the necessary policy framework that will facilitate and promote their uptake. This ensures that upstream decisions in the value chain are coordinated with downstream activities and all potential synergies are identified, leading to the creation of "meso-level closed resource loops" and thus the promotion of a circular economy.

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Section: Meso-level Eco-efficiency Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systemic eco-efficiency assessment of meso-level water use systems

Angelis-Dimakis

Arampatzis

Assimacopoulos

2016

Journal of Cleaner Production

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“…In 1996, BASF Corporation developed an eco-efficiency methodology to assess both the economic and environmental impacts of chemicals, processes, and products in their lifecycle (Saling et al, 2002).The methodology created by BASF has since been further developed and follows the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards for lifecycle assessment (LCA) (Uhlman and Saling, 2010) and also ISO 14045 for Eco-Efficiency assessment (Bradlee et al, 2009). BASF's methodology can be used for sustainable decisionmaking at all levels, from industrial to consumer (Wall-Markowski et al, 2005).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additionally, Table 4 considers as reference the indicators used in the BASF´s methodology (Saling et al, 2002) and also studied by Wall-Markowski et al (2005). These indicators are material consumption, energy consumption, emissions, toxicity potential and risk potential.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards sustainable development through the perspective of eco-efficiency - A systematic literature review

Caiado

Dias

Mattos

et al. 2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

341

138

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Sustainability concerns have increasingly gained importance among organizations and their stakeholders around the world. In this context, eco-efficiency has become a consistent tool towards the transition to sustainable development and the efforts of ecoefficiency indicators have been used for comparative studies and decision-making tasks, providing better financial, environmental, and social performance. The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review on the theme of sustainable development from the perspective of eco-efficiency, with the adaptation of the Knowledge Development Process intervention instrument -constructivist (ProKnow-C). The paper identifies and structures the state-of-the-art between Eco-Efficiency and Sustainable Development with a view to: (i) selecting a Bibliographic Portfolio (BP) that is aligned with the perception of the researchers on the theme; (ii) performing a bibliometric analysis of the selected BP; (iii) performing a thematic synthesis; (iv) finding the integration of eco-efficiency and sustainable development with other approaches; (v) proposing an innovative framework to achieve sustainable development through ecoefficiency indicators; and (vi) finding paths for further research. This research makes multiple new contributions, providing both academics and practitioners a better panorama to achieve sustainable development through eco-efficiency by expanding the literature review, highlighting the synergies and barriers between eco-efficiency and sustainable development and by comparing and analysing them, showing its relevant features. In addition, we synthesized the contributions of the BP according to the BASF indicators, sustainable dimensions and four measurement levels: industry, organization, project and process to better describe the current academic scenario on the subject.

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“…Wal-Markowski, et al, (2005) [3] conducted research that dealt with the relationship between environmental management practice and the performance of BASF, a leading European chemical company. BASF introduced eco -efficiency methodology from 1996.…”

Section: Environmental Management Practices Of Private Companiesmentioning

confidence: 99%