According to Ernest Lowe, John Warren, Andreas Hein, and others, an EIP is a community of manufacturing and service businesses seeking enhanced environmental and economic performance through collaboration in managing environmental and resource issues, including energy, water, and materials (Lowe and Warren 1996). By working together, the community of businesses seeks a collective benefit that is greater than the sum of the individual benefits each company would realize if it optimized its individual performance only. The goal of an EIP is to improve economic performance of the participating companies while minimizing their environmental impact.
Industrial activity releases wastes into local, regional, and eventually global ecosystems. Since the 1970s, myriad laws and regulations have been promulgated to limit emissions to air and water, and to regulate solid and hazardous waste disposal. Further, industrial activity results in nonpoint‐source pollution caused by general runoff, spills, or illegal dumping. Business and the environment have traditionally been considered natural enemies. The assumption has long been “more environmental protection corresponds to higher costs for business”; however, new developments in research and business operations are challenging this assumption. Many companies such as 3 M have long realized the economic benefits of applying environmental principles to business operations. The goal of an EIP is to minimize the ecological impact of industrial activity and to improve business performance. In the United States and Canada, several projects are testing this idea, which has already demonstrated its effectiveness in Europe, most spectacularly perhaps, in Kalundborg, Denmark, as discussed by Hein et al. (2015); EIO 2012; Lowe (2001), and others.
An EIP is a set of businesses that share resources in order to increase profitability and reduce environmental impact. The implementation of EIPs may significantly contribute to the creation of a sustainable economy. Despite this prospect, the actual development of EIPs is challenging, as a variety of factors must be considered. Not only technical, economic, and environmental factors are relevant but numerous stakeholder relationships as well, such as between firms, governmental bodies, and local communities. Hein et al. (2015) presents a conceptual framework that is used to capture these diverse aspects and the relationships between them. The Unified Modeling Language is used for modeling its concepts and relationships. First, based on a literature survey, relevant concepts of EIPs are identified. One central concept is “industrial symbiosis.” A novel value‐based interpretation of industrial symbiosis is presented. Second, the park’s economic, local, and regional development context, as well as its internal technical components and their relationships, are modeled. Finally, the framework is used for modeling a concrete EIP, in this case part of the Kalundborg EIP (Hein et al. 2015).
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