Factor 10
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Factor Ten is a social and economic policy program developed by the Factor Ten institute with the stated goal of "provid[ing] practical support for achieving significant advances in sustainable value creation, in particular through increases in resource productivity throughout the economy.[1]
Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek, from the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, first proposed the Factor 10 and dematerialization concepts in the early 1990s. He concluded in his studies that 80% of the world's resources are distributed among First World nations, which contribute 20% of the global population, so those nations are promoting an unsustainable system of development. The goal of Factor 10 is to assure that nations do not exceed the planet's carrying capacity but leave sufficient resources for future generations.[2]
Factor 4
Factor 10 evolved from the less dramatic Factor 4 was originally proposed by L. Hunter Lovins and Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute and Ernst von Weizsäcker, the founder of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment & Energy. Their book Factor 4 explains how simple it is for nations to achieve Factor 4 results with existing technologies. The concept attempts to reduce resource and energy use by 75% by doubling output and halving input of production.
