Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modeled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into commodities which can be bought and sold to meet the needs of humanity. IE seeks to quantify the material flows and document the industrial processes that make modern society function. Industrial ecologists are often concerned with the impacts that industrial activities have on the environment, with use of the planet’s supply of natural resources, and with problems of waste disposal. IE is a growing multidisciplinary field of research which combines aspects of engineering, economics, sociology, toxicology, and the natural sciences (Allenby 2006; Ashton 2009; Jensen 2011).
IE provides the theoretical scientific basis upon which understanding, and reasoned improvement, of current practices can be based. It incorporates, among other things, research involving energy supply and use, new materials, new technologies, basic sciences, economics, law, management, and social sciences. It encompasses concurrent engineering, design for the environment (DFE), dematerialization, process pollution prevention, waste conversion, waste exchange, by‐product utilization to a new product, waste minimization, and recycling, with Zero Emissions as an important subset. IE can also be a policy tool. It is a view of a system in which one seeks to optimize the total materials cycle from virgin material to finished material, to component, to product, to obsolete product, and to ultimate disposal. Factors to be optimized include resources, energy, and capital.
IE is a dynamic, systems‐based framework that enables management of human activity on a sustainable basis by minimizing energy and materials usage, ensuring acceptable quality of life for people, minimizing ecological impacts of human activity to levels natural systems can sustain, and maintaining economic viability of systems for industry, trade, and commerce. The IE approach involves (i) application of science to industrial systems, (ii) defining the system boundary to incorporate the natural world, and (iii) seeking to optimize that system. In this context, industrial systems apply not just to private sector manufacturing and service but also to government operations, including provision of infrastructure.
IE is a framework for designing and operating industries as living systems interdependent with natural systems, and therefore it is essential to grasp the concept of industrial metabolism. Whereas the biosphere’s metabolism is a near‐perfect recycling system because so many of its components are capable of biological regeneration, in industry, metabolism depends largely on the combustion of fossil fuels that are not regenerated within the system.
Thus, students of industrial metabolism investigate the mass flows of key industrial materials of environmental significance and their associated emissions. With this information in hand, industrial ecologists are better able to balance environmental concerns and economic performance, factoring in the real value of nonrenewable resources and the real costs of environmental pollution. These efforts are enhanced by improvements in understanding of local and global ecological constraints.
IE supports coordination of design over the life cycle of products and processes. IE enables creation of short‐term innovations in a long‐term context. While much of the initial work in IE has focused on manufacturing, a full definition of industrial systems includes service, agricultural, manufacturing, military, and other public operations, as well as infrastructure such as landfills, water and sewage systems, and transportation systems.
The concept of an “industrial ecosystem” received wide attention when Scientific American published an article by two General Motors researchers who suggested that the days of finding an “open space beyond the village gates” for the by‐products of industrial activity were quickly fading (Frosch and Gallopoulos 1989). The concept of IE has spawned an ever increasing amount of research and activities. At the most basic level, IE describes a system where one industry’s wastes (outputs) become another’s raw materials (inputs). Within this “closed loop, illustrated in Figure 9.1,” fewer materials would be wasted. Thus, if businesses were able to turn waste into food, they could sharply reduce pollution and the need for raw materials (Van der Ryn and Cowan 1996).
Many industries have long had symbiotic relationships where wastes and materials are transformed internally or by others. For example, metal industries use scrap materials in the production process; the advent of the electric arc furnace (EAF) increased the ability of steel manufacturers to use scrap materials. Petrochemical and chemical companies are adept at finding new production uses or markets for waste materials (Richards et al. 1994). The growth in rubber, plastics, paper, and glass recycling has generated new uses for previously discarded materials. As Ernest Lowe suggests, IE is a broad holistic framework for guiding the transformation of the industrial systems. The shift from the linear model (mine pit to producer, to consumer, to dump) to a closed‐loop model, more closely resembling the cyclical flows of ecosystems, has stimulated new ways of thinking in forward‐looking companies, in a number of universities, and in governmental agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy in the United States (Low and Warren 1996; Lowe 1995, 2001).
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