ISO 14001 originated in the 1990s, and ISO 50001 is even newer. The basic and easily understandable concepts behind them have, however, been around for more than 100 years.

Harrington Emerson’s paper, “Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages” (The Engineering Magazine, 1909) uses examples from nature to illustrate the gap between existing and achievable uses of natural resources, and it also introduces very explicitly the science of lean manufacturing. On page 14 of the paper, Emerson compares the relative inefficiency of combustion engines to very efficient biochemical processes: “An oil engine may reach 30 per cent thermal efficiency, but the salmon, assuming his whole weight to be pure oil, without consuming it, uses up several times more energy than is yielded by an equal weight of oil in combustion.”

The salmon uses atomic, not thermal, energy.

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