Resource efficiency

Resource efficiency is about maximising the supply of money, materials, staff, and other assets that can be drawn on by a person or organization in order to function effectively, with minimum wasted (natural) resource expenses. It means using the Earth's limited resources in a sustainable manner while minimising environmental impact.

A 2014 report by The Carbon Trust suggested that resource challenges are intensifying rapidly - for example, there could be a 40% gap between available water supplies and water needs by 2030, and some critical materials could be in short supply as soon as 2016. These challenges could lead to disruptions to supply, growing regulatory requirements, volatile fluctuation of prices, and may ultimately threaten the viability of existing business models.

Resource efficiency measures, methods, and aims are quite similar to those of resource productivity/resource intensity and of the slightly more environment-inclined concept of ecological efficiency/eco-efficiency.

To achieve and optimize natural resource and energy effiency, several sustainable economical or production schemes have been proposed over the course of the last 50 years: circular economy, cradle-to-cradle- or regenerative design, as well as biomimetics principles, just to name a few. Common to all of them is built-in sustainability, in which (non-renewable) resource-wasting is ruled out by design. They are generally built to be holistic, robustly self-sustaining and respecting the carrying capacity of the economic / ecological system.

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