WHAT IS INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY (IE)?

History

Industrial Ecology (IE) is a relatively new field of research that is rapidly emerging on a global scale. Frosch and Gallopoulos (1989) first introduced the term Industrial Ecology together with the concept of Industrial Ecosystems, referring to the design of production sites in analogy to natural ecosystems.

Industrial Ecology as a field of research was first introduced at a colloquium at the US National Academy of Sciences in 1991. A number of papers from this colloquium try to define Industrial Ecology by describing the analogy: Jelinski (1992), Frosch (1992), Smart (1992), and Nordhaus (1992). The field Industrial Ecology has grown fast in the last years and now several initiatives are taken for education programmes in this area (Van der Voet, 2002). The Journal of Industrial Ecology (since 1997, published by MIT Press, http://mitpress.mit.edu/JIE) and the International Society for Industrial Ecology (since 2001, http://www.yale.edu/is4ie) give Industrial Ecology a strong position in the international scientific community. Also the Journal of Cleaner Production had a special issue on Industrial Ecology in 1997 (Volume 5, Issues 1-2, Pages 1-180) and 2004 (Volume 12, Issues 8-10, Pages 803-1132).

The concept of Industrial Ecology

Industrial Ecology aims at a sustainable co-existence of the technosphere and the environment. The analogy between natural and technical systems and processes is a core concept. Processes in nature, where cycles are closed and waste from one process is input for another, are models for socio-technological processes.

It is important to emphasize that the word "industrial" does not mean only the industrial complexes or industrial process systems, the word is used for all kinds of technological systems used in the exploration-production-consumption chain. Ayres (1989) elaborated the biosphere-technosphere analogy as a useful image to develop in his description of Industrial Metabolism. In short, the analogy amounts to the following:

• In the biosphere, evolution has resulted in efficient use of materials and energy in systems to build and break down functional materials in a steady state, if we consider planet earth as one system.
• In the technosphere, resources are exploited and unusable waste streams to soil, water, and air are produced.
• By learning from the biosphere, society may design and manage its socio-technological processes in a more sustainable manner, resulting in speeding up technological evolution towards a state of material use with more efficiency and with less unusable side products.

Industrial Ecology analogies

Examples of Industrial Ecology analogies between Biosphere and Technosphere

It is important to realize that the analogy only holds for a certain approach to the material flows in the technosphere. Indeed, there are also many fields where the analogy results in contradictions. Some examples of these contradictions are:

• Learning from nature how to achieve the sustainable development of the technosphere asks for analysis, design, and implementation, but in nature guided approaches like these are not visible. The absence in the ecosphere of human-like planning and organisation is the cause of the very slow changing processes and long evolution times, which could never be useful for sustainable development of the technosphere.

• Nature has many ways to stabilize disturbances of the steady state. Sometimes these may result in conflicts with human values, like equity, justice, or ethics.

• Many examples are described of a successful escape of exotics from competitors by relocation. In analogy to the technosphere, this would mean that exotic technologies could be tested better in technology-free circumstances. Something that would result in many sustainability problems.

• Squandering of seeds is a common mechanism in the ecosphere. As long as the technosphere is in its early experimental stages, it never can have a squandering attitude like the ecosphere.