The climate change, the foreseen shortage of raw materials and the fast growing population of the world increase the demand for energy and raw materials and also their prices. That is a great challenge. To meet this challenge it needs extensive transformation in politics, economy and society according to the guiding principle of sustainability (sustainable development). The national sustainability strategy 2002 of the federal government of Germany shows some concrete targets namely for the reduction of the raw material consumption. Target is to double the (material) productivity from 1994 to 2020. A systematic increase of material productivity (often called material efficiency) requires that it can be measured. In addition it has to be used in practice as key performance indicator (KPI) to control the development and improvement of industrial processes. This is especially true for the material transforming processes of the chemical industry regarded in this article.