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Abstract

In the history of mankind to date, the cases where natural energy and material resources were apparently unlimited and cheap have always been the exception. If there was any abundance at all, it was at most regional and temporary. The provision of resources was almost always associated with enormous technical, economic and ecological effort. The economical use of resources is therefore as much a part of human history as the search for them. Resource efficiency was, for example, a major issue after the First World War, both in the USA and in Europe (Schmidt & Görlach 2010).

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© 2019 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature

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Schmidt, M., Spieth, H., Haubach, C., Kühne, C. (2019). Resource efficiency in industrial society. In: 100 Pioneers in Efficient Resource Management. Springer Spektrum, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56745-6_1

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