The Positive Impact Factory–Transition from Eco-efficiency to Eco–effectiveness Strategies in Manufacturing

Manufacturing of products and goods contributes to more than one-third of the global CO2 emissions caused by humankind mainly due to combustion of fossil fuels. Current measures to reduce the emissions primarily focus on eco-efficiency, seeking mainly for minimized energy demand and to a smaller extent also for minimized resource consumption. However, this strategy of just “making things less bad” will not suffice to overcome the aforementioned challenges. Instead eco-effectiveness strategies need to be aspired, containing manufacturing systems which lead to a positive recoupling between economy and ecology. Contemporary trends and solutions in industry prove that the metamorphosis towards eco-effectiveness has already started and is gaining momentum. This contribution gives an overview about historically related bad impacts of manufacturing to environment and society and derives requirements for future manufacturing, leading to the concept of a Positive Impact Factory. Several industry examples are presented, showing factories on their individual way towards such positive impacts.