Product Description

"Zero Emissions" has become a definitive term in the debate on sustainable development in the last few years. While considered a utopian target by some, the concept clearly describes what business and industry of the future must aim to achieve. There is no confusion here; the aim is transparent: no pollution and no waste. Only when industry mimics nature, where nothing is wasted, can it achieve the same levels of material productivity. The world of waste is a world of opportunity. A world where the waste from one process can become the raw material for another--a cascade of new materials once thought worthless supporting new products, new processes and new wealth--as industries that were previously considered unrelated cluster together. A world where new business will be created on an unprecedented scale. This is not just a theory: projects in the agro-business, based on integrated biosystems, are already up and have proved effective. UpSizing examines how the adoption of the Zero Emissions concept not only radically reduces pollution and waste but can contribute significantly to the generation of income and jobs - specifically for those that need them most: the rural poor in less developed countries.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #633079 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 222 pages

About the Author
Gunter Pauli, formerly the President of Ecover, was responsible for the construction of Europe's first ecological factory. In 1994, he founded and now directs the Zero Emissions Research Initiative (ZERI). He lectures regularly to business executives and governments on competitive strategies. He has written a number of books and is published in twelve languages.

Customer Reviews

The Best Book I've Read on Sustainable Development
This is a must read for anyone interested in the future of business.

Refreshing and thought-provoking
Pauli has succeeded in doing a rare thing indeed...that of demonstrating how the environment and the economy can complement each other to create synergies! All this in the context of protecting and preserving our environment for current and future generations.

The book is well written and supported by solid facts and well-developed case studies. It serves as a guide post for people of all walks of life, including CEOs, entrepreneurs, environmentalist and public servants, who want to act or promote action that will help reduce, even eliminate waste, while stimulating economic development. More importantly, this book gives hope that we can adopt ways of doing business that reduce the negative impacts on our environment.

Breakthrough Ideas
Upsizing seems more a visionary work to me than one to read to find out the environmental consequences of human industrialization (See review below). Pauli presents a vision for an economically viable world where there's ZERO pollution, and offers a number of real-world experiments that seem so far to have worked. However, the path he encourages won't be an easy one -- it requires systematically rethinking what industry is, how it works, and how it fits into our world. Upsizing begins to construct an argument for why we should do this and shows how the rethought world might look.

Basically, Pauli is making a case for turning all industrial waste toward productive purposes. Our current processes, for instance, to make paper result in a huge loss of productivity when waste wood products -- which could be turned to other uses -- are burned or disposed of such that they are lost forever.

While the ideas in this book are incredibly exciting, the delivery seemed to me a bit rough. While competently presented, as an argument this book seems a little bit disparate and untamed, and its style is a bit flat, if not boring. Still, kudos to Pauli for writing it. His is an exciting vision, and I only hope his projects get the press and consideration they deserve. I'm giving it four stars because of the extraordinary ideas: more people should know about how we can make our waste productive.