As defined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in 1992, "eco-efficiency is achieved by the delivery of competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impacts and resource intensity throughout the life-cycle to a level at
least in line with the Earth’s estimated carrying capacity."Eco-Efficiency becomes then a management strategy, which aims at improving the economic and ecological efficiency of companies, attaining a higher Value with fewer inputs, materials and energy and fewer outputs, waste (i.e. pollution in the form of emissions and waste). The result is a higher Value for companies, defined as the relationship between the satisfaction of needs and the resources used in achieving that satisfaction, as well as the increase of their competitiveness. Using the synergies between tools used by Value Management (Value Analysis) and Eco-efficiency (Cleaner Production), the Sustainable Value methodology was developed, and it integrates the three aspects of Sustainability (economic, environment and social) in Value evaluation. The aim of this approach
is to increase Sustainable Value of the study subjects (value subject being the application of the methodology to a specific subject) by evaluating their satisfaction levels taking into account environmental and social aspects. The resources used to attain that satisfaction of needs are also characterized in an explicit way in terms of
environmental, social and economic aspects. To attain these results an eight phases working plan, to be developed by a team, is presented. To test and validate this methodology some projects have been developed, involving 19 enterprises where the approach was implemented. Those companies, in most cases Small and Medium
ones, came from different activity areas and different regions covering almost the whole Portuguese territory. Also the results emerging from the application in the different companies are presented as well as conclusions and suggestions about some conditions that must be fulfilled for the success of the introduction and implementation of these approaches in a company
