Eco-efficiency and Beyond

Jan-Dirk Seiler-Hausmann was project leader in the Working Group Eco-efficiency and Sustainable Enterprises at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. Together with Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker, he published a collection of essays on eco-efficiency (Okoeffizienz: Management der Zukunft; Birkhauser, 1999). He organised the international conference From Eco-efficiency to Sustainability in Enterprises held alongside the ENVITEC trade fair in Dusseldorf in 2001. The proceedings of the conference are documented in a book of the same name published with Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker and Bjorn Stigson. In 2001-2002 he spent six months as a visiting researcher at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Japan before joining sustainability communications at Henkel. Dr Christa Liedtke, born in 1964, studied biology and theology. Since 1993, she has been working as project leader at the Wuppertal Institute, Division for Material Flows and Structural Change, advancing in 1995 to team leader for product-related material flow analysis and sustainable management systems. Since 2000 she has been working as head of the Working Group Eco-efficiency and Sustainable Enterprises, now Research Group Sustainable Production and Consumption, which is concerned with developing workable concepts, tools and management systems that support economic, ecological and social sustainability in industries, enterprises and product lines Dr Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker is a member of the German parliament, and, since 2002, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. He has also been chairman of the Parliamentary Study Commission Globalisation of the Economy: Challenges and Answers (2000-2002), and, previously, president of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy from 1991 to 2000. He is a member of the Club of Rome and of the ILO Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation. With Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, he wrote the landmark book Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use (Earthscan Publications, 1997).