Presented paper shows the power of emergy analysis and its ability for simultaneous consideration of different industrial resources, goods and services for the purposes of decision-making. Accompanied by the pinch concept, which by now tries to deal separately with each of the resources (energy, water, hydrogen, oxygen, etc.), the combined emergy-pinch analysis provides wide range of benefits boosted with extra inside and design guidelines improving the integration of processes and the ability to consider the 'past' and the 'future' of the resources (the effort of making them available and the effort of minimising their environmental impact). The paper presents the theoretical background of the emergy and pinch combination into general resources management technique and proves this concept on classical emergy and pinch examples accompanied with a combined resources management industrial problem considering the environmental impact of industrial activities. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.