Cleaner Production Tools -- Industrial Ecology
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Industrial Ecology (IE) examines the interconnectedness of industry. Industries are related to one another, to their location and physical environment, and to all kinds of surrounding systems. Many environmental problems created by industry stem from the use of a strictly linear production process: extracting raw materials and fossil energy, processing the material and energy, and dumping the waste back into natural systems. IE seeks to optimize the total materials cycle from raw material to finished material, to component, to product, to waste product, and to ultimate disposal. Generally, IE must be designed into systems, not added on.
IE can be applied in different ways. Land use planning can encourage the proximity of symbiotic or complementary industries and the placing of industries where they will have a minimal environmental and community impact. These "Industrial Ecology Parks" can improve the ability of industries to work together, by allowing waste from one industrial process to be used as the raw materials for another. This reduces the effect on the environment by reducing transportation as well as disposal costs. IE attempts to emulate the natural ecosystem, where materials and energy constantly circulate, and there is no such thing as 'waste.'
Hardin Tibbs, in "Industrial Ecology: An Environmental Agenda for Industry" outlines six principal elements of industrial ecology:
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The creation of industrial ecosystems: maximizing use of recycled materials in production, optimizing use of materials and embedded energy, minimizing waste generation, and reevaluating "wastes" as raw material for other processes.
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Balancing industrial input and output to natural ecosystem capacity: understanding the ability of the larger natural system to deal with toxics and other industrial wastes in typical and catastrophic situations
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Dematerialization of industrial output: reducing materials and energy intensity in industrial production.
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Improving the metabolic pathways of industrial processes and materials use: reducing or simplifying industrial processes to emulate natural, highly efficient ones
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Systemic patterns of energy use: promote the development of an energy supply system that functions as a part of the industrial ecosystem, and is free of the negative environmental impacts associated with current patterns of energy use
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Policy alignment with a long-term perspective of industrial system evolution: nations working together to integrate economic and environmental policies
ŠNDRC 2000-2006