Eco-Innovation: opportunities for advancing waste prevention

Eco-innovation concerns environment-informed and -driven improvements and innovations in products, services and processes that deliver more value to producers and/or consumers while progressively reducing net environmental impacts. A classification of approaches is proposed, and illustrated, in efficiency practices, design strategies and creativity templates. The efficiency practices, and to a lesser extent, the design strategies have demonstrated their usefulness in a variety of processes and products globally, often with environmental and economic benefits. The scarcity of examples where their application has resulted in highly innovative and resource-efficient products or processes, suggests that a niche remains, which can potentially be fulfilled with creativity templates.