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

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Eco-efficiency has long been a part of the environmental movement. "Doing more with less" has been an environmental guideline for decades. Some estimates suggest that with present technologies alone, business could readily achieve at least a fourfold increase in efficiency and perhaps as much as a tenfold increase. Consider that a fourfold increase, called "Factor Four" in the sustainability literature, would make it possible to achieve double productivity from one-half the resource use.
Just as biological processes such as photosynthesis cycle the "waste" of one activity into the resource of another, this principle is often referred to as biomimicry. The ultimate goal of biomimicry is to eliminate waste altogether rather than reducing it. If we truly mimic biological processes, the end result of one process (e.g., leaves and oxygen produced by photosynthesis) is ultimately reused as the productive resources (e.g., soil and water) of another process (plant growth) with only solar energy added. The evolution of business strategy toward biomimicry can be understood along a continuum. The earliest phase has been described as "take-make-waste." Business takes resources, makes products out of them, and discards whatever is left over. A second phase envisions business taking responsibility for its products from "cradle to grave." Sometimes referred to as "life-cycle" responsibility, this approach has already found its way into both industrial and regulatory thinking.
Cradle-to-grave, or life-cycle, responsibility holds that a business is responsible for the entire life of its products, including the ultimate disposal even after the sale. Cradle-to-cradle responsibility extends this idea even further and holds that a business should be responsible for incorporating the end results of its products back into the productive cycle. This responsibility, in turn, would create incentives to redesign products so that they could be recycled efficiently and easily.