BIOMES: Marian Chertow - Associate Prof. of Industrial Environmental Management, Dir. of the Program on Solid Waste Policy, and Dir. of the Industrial Environmental - Increasing Business Efficiency and Community through Industrial Symbiosis
Industrial ecology is an interdisciplinary environmental field that emerged in the early 1990s. It is principally concerned with tracking flows of material and energy through systems at different scales – from factories, to cities, to countries and the planet as a whole. These flows have grown rapidly since the 20th century: during the same period in which population increased five times, extraction of materials, energy and water increased 8-12 times (Haberl et al 2018). Management of these physical resources can cause considerable social conflict and better ways to handle them are much needed.
The Yale Center for Industrial Ecology at YSE opened in 1997 and is known globally for its role in formalizing research and fortifying tools, approaches and education as the IE community has matured. The subfield of industrial ecology known as “industrial symbiosis” has been championed at the IE Center describing this phenomenon as businesses and communities coming together in various planned or unplanned ways such that physical “wastes” from one enterprise become the raw material for other enterprises. Industrial symbiosis represents an innovative form of collaborative resource sharing that occurs mostly across businesses in place-based “industrial ecosystems.” Keys to the collective approach of industrial symbiosis are collaboration and the synergistic possibilities offered by geographic proximity (Chertow 2000).
Numerous examples of very different industrial ecosystems illustrate how a more “circular” economy can improve resource management through “loop-closing.” In the Global South reuse is a vital practice that offers raw materials for production as well as incomes for workers. Symbiosis has also been institutionalized globally through the development of “eco-industrial parks.” Finally, various community phenomena are understood to be important factors in increasing social capital and enhancing trust among parties involved with exchange.
The Biomes talk will discuss many outcomes from the ever-growing industrial symbiosis community.