Assessment: civilization under siege.

• Position: Eco-efficiency approach to environment protection

Every time we turn on a light, use the clothes washer of listen to music on the stereo in a country that produces power by burning coal or oil, we add to the amount of carbon dioxide ([CO.sub.2]) that is released into the atmosphere. When we jump into the car to run an errand or visit a friend, the petrol we use also emits carbon and other wastes which cause global warming and ground-level smog. If the petrol is leaded, particles are released into the air, causing health problems for local people.

Whenever we turn on a tap to wash the car, water the lawn or irrigate farmland near a city such as Los Angeles or Mexico City which draws water from a distant aquifer, we drain an increasingly scarce resource which is freely available and perhaps often is taken for granted. These are some of our everyday activities that affect the environment in ways we usually do not notice.

Recent studies use the idea of "eco-logical footprints" to describe all the resources used by a single individual as a way of measuring whether our current lifestyles are sustainable. If the world's 6 billion people consumed and polluted in the manner that most Northern peoples do, we are told, it would take three planet Earths to accommodate us all.

"Footprints" in developing countries are small because most people still live in extreme poverty, although they aspire to levels of comfort enjoyed by the wealthier countries. Economic growth is currently higher in developing countries than in the North. Pollution is also increasing.

All economies can make much greater savings by becoming "cleaner and greener". Most of the energy, water and transport services we pay for are wasted before we are able to use them. Only 3 per cent of the energy from a nuclear- or coal-fired power station becomes light in an incandescent lamp (about 70 per cent of the original fuel energy is wasted before it reaches the lamp which, in turn, converts only 10 per cent of the remainder into light).

Some 80 to 85 per cent of the energy generated by burning petrol is wasted in the car's engine and drive-train before it gets to the wheels. Most water evaporates or spills away before it reaches the roots of a crop. Moving goods over vast distances where the same or similar locally made products could be used is another example of the pattern of "costs without benefits" inherent in our current economic model. In fact, as much as 93 per cent of materials bought and "consumed" do not end up in finished products, according to a recent study by the United States National Academy of Engineers. Some 80 per cent of goods are discarded after a single use and many others do not last as long as they should. By one industry estimate, 99 per cent of the original materials used in the production of goods made in the United States are thrown away within six weeks of sale.

A new approach, dubbed "eco-efficiency", is now being promoted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the United Nations Environment Programme's Cleaner Production Programme. Eco-efficiency which calls for both economic efficiency--using fewer resources and producing less waste mean saving dollars and generating profits--and ecological efficiency--less waste and fewer raw materials--also protects the environment by conserving non-renewable natural resources and creating less pollution.

Savings, by at least a factor of four, could be made in the next 20 to 30 years by adopting the eco-efficiency model, experts say. Production could be doubled while the input of resources, including energy, and pollution could be cut by half Industrialized countries could save some $700 billion over the next 30 years by not having to build the additional power plants necessary to increase energy supply by 50 per cent. Similar initiatives in developing countries could save 40 per cent of current costs, for a total savings of $1.5 trillion dollars.

Eco-efficiency encourages us to think not only about preventing pollution reaching the environment once it has been produced, but about creating less waste from start to finish. It calls for the redesign of...