Industrial Ecology And Spaces Of Innovation

This is an especially timely book. Carefully organized and well motivated, its power lies in the explicit effort to ask how industrial ecology and innovation studies do, can and should intersect. Reid Lifset, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and editor, Journal of Industrial Ecology This book explores the disciplinary interfaces and practical implications of working across the two disciplines of industrial ecology (IE) and innovation studies (IS). Both disciplines have something to say about instigating environmental improvement and more sustainable futures. IE is predicated on the idea that social and economic systems mirror, or should be made to mirror, natural ecological systems. Proponents of IE devise models and techniques to trace material and energy resource flows as they move through social and economic systems. They propose policy and management improvements to increase the resource efficiency of such systems. By contrast, IS researchers work with the idea that innovation is a dynamic activity, vital to social and economic change and is shaped by a range of actors in industry, in government and in households. The authors illustrate the conceptual and practical problems and opportunities of working across this bi-disciplinary interface, with case studies presented from each and from hybrid perspectives that draw on both. These include applied examples from IE such as an evaluation of industrial symbiosis in the UK and from working projects in industrialising countries. Cases that originate with IS cover the areas of food, construction and waste incineration. New directions for conceptual development and further research are also offered. Conceptual blindspots and research gaps are identified at the interface of the two disciplines. Industrial Ecology and Spaces of Innovation will appeal to a wide and interdisciplinary audience including academics and researchers of environmental innovation, management and economics, industrial ecology and schools of environmental engineering. Business environmental practitioners, consultants and managers working with techniques such as life-cycle analysis, environmental impact assessment and collaborative industrial symbiosis initiatives will also find much to engage them within this book.

It might, at first glance, seem to many that industry and ecology make strange bedfellows. For proponents of sustainable development, however, such a union is crucial. How else are we to make the industries that are so central to modern societies consistent with our visions of a sustainable future? Linking Industry and Ecology explores the origins, promise, and relevance of the emerging field of industrial ecology. It situates industrial ecology within the broader range of environmental management strategies and concepts, from the practices of pollution prevention through life cycle management, to the more fundamental shift toward dematerialization and ecological design. The book makes a compelling argument for the need to think ecologically to develop innovative and competitive industrial policy. The contributors to this volume draw on their experience in a variety of disciplines to chart a clear path for industrial ecology. Their work not only affirms what has been learned to date in this nascent field but also provides new insight for a discourse traditionally dominated by natural scientists and engineers, by demonstrating that technologies are socially and politically embedded.

'Joseph Huber's book contains a wealth of information on technological environmental innovations. The scrutiny of this material leads to powerful conclusions, with which scholars should concern themselves. Highly recommended.' - René Kemp, Maastricht University, The Netherlands 'This timely and impressive volume brings technology back into the centre of discussions and debates on environmental reform. In articulating an ecological modernisation perspective, Joseph Huber presents an inspiring, optimistic and at times provocative assessment of the potential and future role of radical technological innovations in greening production-consumption cycles.' - Arthur P.J. Mol, Wageningen University, The Netherlands In this insightful book, Joseph Huber investigates the life cycle analysis of technological and environmental innovations (TEIs). TEIs are new technologies, products and practices which have benign environmental effects and which can increase eco-efficiency. More importantly, they can also improve 'metabolic consistency', thus laying the foundations for a sustainable industrial ecology.

In contrast to the linear "take-make-dispose" model of resource consumption, a new industrial model is proposed in the form of a circular economy. This model aims to optimize the use of resources and to reduce or eliminate waste, and is based on re-use, repair, ecodesign, industrial ecology, sustainable supply and responsible consumption. Industrial ecology and short supply chains can contribute – particularly on a territorial scale – to the emergence of a real sustainable development. This book develops these concepts and presents experiments that are taking place in France and other countries, in addition to an integrated model which details the mechanisms through which industrial ecology and short supply chains can generate economic, social and environmental profits. The possible issues and obstacles facing these new practices are also analyzed, in order to develop the outline of an adapted management and governance which will enable them to be fully realized.

Business-as-usual in terms of industrial and technological development – even if based on a growing fear of pollution and shortages of natural resources – will never deliver sustainable development. However, the growing interest in recent years in the new science of industrial ecology (IE), and the idea that industrial systems should mimic the quasi-cyclical functions of natural ecosystems in an 'industrial food chain', holds promise in addressing not only short-term environmental problems but also the long-term holistic evolution of industrial systems. This possibility requires a number of key conditions to be met, not least the restructuring of our manufacturing and consumer society to reduce the effects of material and energy flows at the very point in history when globalisation is rapidly increasing them. This book sets out to address the theoretical considerations that should be made implicit in future research as well as practical implementation options for industry. The systematic recovery of industrial wastes, the minimisation of losses caused by dispersion, the dematerialisation of the economy, the requirement to decrease our reliance on fuels derived from hydrocarbons and the need for management systems that help foster inter-industry collaboration and networks are among the topics covered. The book is split into four sections. First, the various definitions of IE are outlined. Here, important distinctions are made between industrial metabolism and IE. Second, a number of different industrial sectors, including glass, petroleum and electric power, are assessed with regard to the operationalisation of industrial ecology. Eco-industrial Parks and Networks are also analysed. Third, the options for overcoming obstacles that stand in the way of the closing of cycles such as the separation and screening of materials are considered and, finally, a number of implications for the future are assessed. The contributions to Perspectives on Industrial Ecology come from the leading thinkers working in this field at the crossroads between a number of different disciplines: engineering, ecology, bio-economics, geography, the social sciences and law.

Sustainable consumption and production (SCP) was adopted as a priority area during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 and has since become one of the main vehicles for targeting international sustainability policy. Sustainable consumption focuses on formulating equitable strategies that foster the highest quality of life, the efficient use of natural resources, and the effective satisfaction of human needs while simultaneously promoting equitable social development, economic competitiveness, and technological innovation. But this is a complex topic and, as the challenges of sustainability grow larger, there is a need to re-imagine how SCP policies can be formulated, governed and implemented. The EU-funded project "Sustainable Consumption Research Exchanges" (SCORE!) consists of around 200 experts in the field of sustainable innovation and sustainable consumption. The SCORE! philosophy is that innovation in SCP policy can be achieved only if experts that understand business development, (sustainable) solution design, consumer behaviour and system innovation policy work together in shaping it. Sustainable technology design can be effective only if business can profitably make the products and consumers are attracted to them. To understand how this might effectively happen, the expertise of systems thinkers must be added to the mix. System Innovation for Sustainability 1 is the first result of a unique positive confrontation between experts from all four communities. It examines what SCP is and what it could be, provides a state-of-the-art review on the governance of change in SCP policy and looks at the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches. The SCORE! experts are working with actors in industry, consumer groups and eco-labelling organisations in the key consumption areas of mobility, food and agriculture, and energy use and housing – responsible for 70% of the life-cycle environmental impacts of Western societies – with the aim of stimulating, fostering or forcing change to SCP theory in practice. The System Innovation for Sustainability series will continue with three further volumes of comprehensive case studies in each of these three critical consumption areas. Each chapter of this book examines problems and suggests solutions from a business, design, consumer and system innovation perspective. It primarily examines the differing solutions necessary in the consumer economies of the West, but also comments on the differing needs in rapidly emerging economies such as China, as well as base-of-the-pyramid economies. The System Innovation for Sustainability series is the fruit of the only major international research network on SCP and will set the standard in this field for some years to come. It will be required reading for all involved in the policy debate on sustainable production and consumption from government, business, academia and NGOs for designers, scientists, businesses and system innovators.

This title was first published in 2002. Bringing together a wide range of theoretical and empirical case studies from Canada, New Zealand, South Korea, Turkey, China, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Poland, South Africa, Japan, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, this book addresses these neglected issues, in particular, contemplating the vitally important nexus between industry, environment and the knowledge economy.Throughout the book, four key themes and issues are explored: institution building strategies; agglomeration as territorial context; sustainable industrial-environmental processes and policy initiatives; globalization, learning and industrial location dynamics. The book concludes with an outline of future research directions within the paradigm.

This Handbook discusses the main issues, research, and theory on business and the natural environment, and how they impact on different business functions and disciplines