Environmental Sustainability

Discussion Question 1

Explain the concepts of eco-efficiency, biomimicry, and cradle-to-cradle responsibility.

ANSWER

Environmental Sustainability

Environmental Sustainability

Explain the concepts of eco-efficiency, biomimicry, and cradle-to-cradle responsibility.

Eco-efficiency is part of the environmental movement – doing more with less. Businesses can achieve an increase in efficiency with existing technology. A four-fold increase, referred to as “Factor-Four” in the sustainability literature, can make it possible to achieve double productivity from half of the resources currently used. Eco-efficiency simply means using minimal resources to produce more, which involves improving production efficiency and minimizing waste production (Mendoza et al., 2019). Biomimicry refers to the conversion of one process’ “waste” into the resource of another process, just as with the photosynthesis cycle. Biomimicry eliminates waste instead of reducing it in processes. By mimicking biological processes, we can use the end result of a particular production process as the resource for other production processes by adding a few extra resources (Zari & Jenkin, 2010). This process signifies an evolution of business strategy towards biomimicry, which can be looked at as a continuum.

The earliest stage of the continuum can be described as “take-make-waste”, where business takes resources, makes products using them, and then discards the waste. The second stage involves a business taking responsibility for products from “cradle-to-grave”, which can be referred to as life-cycle responsibility or cradle-to-grave responsibility. Here, a business is responsible for the entire lifecycle of its products and any ultimate disposal of waste, even after a product has been used. Cradle-to-grave responsibility also holds that an organization has to be responsible for the incorporation of the end results of its products back into its production cycle (Zari & Jenkin, 2010). With this responsibility, businesses produce recyclable products or products with components that can be reused or recycled.

References

Mendoza, J. M. F., D’Aponte, F., Gualtieri, D., & Azapagic, A. (2019). Disposable baby diapers: Life cycle costs, eco-efficiency and circular economy. Journal of Cleaner Production, 211, 455-467.

Zari, M. P., & Jenkin, S. (2010). Re-defining cutting edge sustainable design: from eco-efficiency to regenerative development. In Sustainable Building Conference (SB10), Wellington, New Zealand.