Efficiency Meets Sustainability: Why the Two Are No Longer at Odds

Sustainability is not a new concept—its roots go back to the 18th century. In 1713, Hans Carl von Carlowitz formulated the principle of harvesting only as much wood as could regrow in his Sylvicultura oeconomica. With this, the chief mining administrator laid the foundation for the understanding of sustainability that remains valid today: meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

What began as a rule of forestry evolved over the centuries into a guiding principle for the economy and society as a whole: conserving resources, increasing efficiency, assuming social responsibility. In recent years, the social dimension of sustainability has regained prominence. This underscores an important point: sustainability is more than climate protection. It encompasses environmental, economic, and societal aspects in equal measure.

For more than 150 years, the chemical industry has demonstrated that progress and sustainability are not mutually exclusive. The sector has always been driven by the need to make processes more efficient—reducing energy use, raw materials, and waste. With industrialization, the focus shifted from resource preservation to technological innovation.

The Haber–Bosch process, used industrially from 1913 onward, revolutionized fertilizer production and secured the nutrition of a growing global population. At the same time, it required enormous amounts of energy: estimates suggest that even today, one to two percent of global energy consumption can be traced back to this process—and therefore a corresponding share of worldwide CO₂ emissions. Continuous process optimization, heat recovery, and the use of sustainable raw materials such as green hydrogen can help further minimize its footprint.

Sulfuric acid is often referred to as the “workhorse” of chemistry because it is needed in almost every industrial sector. Well into the mid‑20th century, statisticians even used national production volumes to estimate a country’s technological progress and economic strength. The contact process, which was first used industrially in 1890 to produce sulfuric acid, reduced raw material consumption and emissions compared with earlier methods. It was also developed in response to environmental issues such as forest damage caused by sulfur dioxide—an issue that had already led to court cases in the 19th century.

Today, closing material cycles is expected to drive further progress in sustainability. Companies like Evonik are leading the way. With a new hydrolysis process, the Essen‑based chemical company can break down polyurethane foams into their chemical building blocks, polyol and toluene diamine. This means that newly produced foam could, in the future, be made almost entirely from recycled material.

In the chemical industry, companies such as the Degussa (German Gold and Silver Refinery, in German: Deutsche Gold‑ und Silber‑Scheide-Anstalt) introduced employee‑friendly measures long before such regulations became law—for example, a sickness and disability insurance scheme in 1875 or a “pension reserve fund” established in 1886 to support workers, employees, and their surviving dependents. Particularly groundbreaking was the eight‑hour workday (within a six‑day workweek), which Degussa introduced in 1884—34 years before a corresponding law.

These examples show that sustainability is not a new concept but deeply embedded in the industry’s DNA in all its dimensions. Efficiency gains and social equity have always been the driving forces—and they remain so today.