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Eco-efficiency has long been a concept: the intention of reducing environmental impact while increasing environmental value. Its origins are with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. However, in a globalized world with sustained economic growth environmental degradation is threatening. Macro level requirements on sustainability should be reflected in the eco-efficiency of choices at a micro level, like on technologies, supply chains and product systems. Eco-efficiency analysis has come to fruition as a fully quantified method for analysis, linking to specific domains of economic modelling, specific environmental models, and several methods for integrating these two domains into eco-efficiency scores. This eco-efficiency analysis can guide choices in policy, business, and consumptions activities, all from a single common background. A central asset of eco-efficiency analysis is that it does not depend on a specific evaluation of environmental impacts against economic effects, avoiding the often disputed results of neo-classical evaluation methods. For integrating the different environmental scores several evaluation methods may be used including those based on willingness-to-pay, panel procedures, and public statements on policy goals. Each may have advantages, but in line with the normative neutrality strived for in eco-efficiency, these preference and value choices may be avoided to some extent. This can be done either by taking a common denominator or by having less demanding objectives, for instance focusing on efficiency of measures only. A substantial Japanese paper on Maximum Abatement Cost method and a paper on revealed public preferences in The Netherlands comprise the first section on methods. Next, there are four sections on domains of application of eco-efficiency analysis. In the Agriculture section, a case on conservation agriculture in China is worked out, using input-output analysis. In the Industry section, cases range from supply chain management to waste water management and methods to speed up innovation. In the Products Consumption section, cases refer to overall household performance, specific energy products and methods for upgradeable product design. Finally, in the Recycling section, cases relate to increasing the supply of secondary materials and to increasing secondary materials use.

The importance of eco-efficiency has been gaining momentum for the last years. This concept crystalized in the 1990s as a result of multi-layer and multi-aspect tendencies that were taking place in different parts of the world since the beginning of the 1960s. The major step which has been done is reaching the point of wide societal consensus that if quality of life and economic output is to continue to grow, ways need to be found that the economies produce more with less. This is the kernel of the eco-efficiency concept. In order progress to be made towards it, however, pertinent indicators need to be identified and supported both at organizational and at county level. The current paper aims at presenting the concept of eco-efficiency and some of the widely used indicators to date – those defined during the Round Table on Eco-efficiency organized by the Government of Canada, the ones proposed by the UNESCAP and the ones put forward by Muller and Strum. After that their applicability is being discussed in view of their practical usage.

Paul Collier argues that, "Proper stewardship of natural assets and liabilities is a matter of planetary urgency: natural resources have the potential either to transform the poorest countries or to tear them apart, while the carbon emissions and agricultural follies of the developed world could further impoverish them"1. This line of debate has been more fashionable in understanding the growing deleterious effects of environmental use currently riddled with inequality. The essay builds on seminal studies such as UNEP 2012 post Rio environmental reports, TRUCOST,(2008,2013)an independent environmental survey which provided an analysis of global cost of damage on the environment by the business sector. The aim is to create possible linkages between environmental consumption and sustainability. This strand forms an offshoot of the "unsustainability" thesis where core development issues such as green economy, eco- efficiency, ecological footprints, dematerialism etc, are marginalised by the high income countries. In an increasingly globalizing world, eco-efficiency, emphasizes creating more goods and services with ever less use of resources, waste and pollution. This paper sets to interrogate the post Rio+20 Summit and the extent of global operationalization of eco-efficiency among corporate organizations. It explores certain theoretical evidence on production and consumption dynamics of multinationals in the high income countries using the political ecology tools of analysis. Findings suggest evidence of prevailing global unsustainable environmental use which taints green economy, eco efficiency and sustainable development. It recommends that lack of policy implementation in this direction poses greater challenges to sustainable development.

The research about energy and eco-efficiency of manufacturing processes is of great interest to all parties including manufacturers, consumers, government and others. This is due to the soaring energy costs and the environmental impacts caused by high energy consumption levels. However, the energy consumption of manufacturing process and the associated environmental impact has been historically overlooked. Unit process is the fundamental, but dynamic element of any manufacturing system. Thus, it requires adequate evaluation of its energy and eco-efficiency in order to derive further improvement measures. This research has developed a reliable methodology for evaluating energy and eco-efficiency of unit manufacturing processes. The Specific Energy Consumption, SEC, has been identified as the key indicator for the energy efficiency of unit processes. An empirical approach has been validated on different machine tools and manufacturing processes to characterize the relationship between process parameters and energy consumptions. All the derived SEC models agree with a universal form, where the Material Removal Rate (MRR) or throughput plays a decisive role in the model. The statistical results and additional validation runs have proved the high accuracy of the derived models which is capable of predicting energy consumption with an accuracy of over 90 per cent. In order to evaluate the eco-efficiency of manufacturing processes, the value and the associated environmental impacts of the processes have also been discussed. Besides the electricity energy consumption, other resource consumptions such as tool and coolant have been taken into account. The interrelationship among process parameters, process value and the associated environmental impact has been integrated in the evaluation of eco-efficiency. The evaluation results have been further investigated to develop strategies for improving the energy and eco-efficiency of manufacturing processes. In addition, the derived SEC models of manufacturing processes have been decomposed in order to explore the mechanism of the model coefficients. A clustered model has been also derived for a rough estimation. Moreover, the derived SEC models can also improve the quality of Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases. In addition, the different energy efficiency strategies have been proposed from different perspectives.

The article analyses Japanese approaches to dealing with eco-efficiency from an institutional perspective. Our main outlook is that though promising attempts have been made despite the overall economic crisis, a better horizontal coordination among administration and business is required. The governance processes can be analysed following approaches developed by New Institutional Economics and related policy analysis. The paper is divided into three sections. The first introduces the concept of eco-efficiency and explains the demand for regulatory policies from theories of market failures; the paper argues in favour of innovation-oriented regulation. The second examines how a nation's institutional capabilities influence knowledge generation towards new solutions that sell on the markets; the "capacity-building approach" as developed by Martin Janicke is explicitly discussed. The third section discusses contemporary Japanese policies with regard to waste, energy and material flows on the governmental and the business level. It explains how European approaches diffuse and merge with domestic Japanese institutions. However, governance of eco-efficiency is expected to continue to differ due to national differences and specific conditions of knowledge creation.