107
5 Conclusion: Industrial Symbiosis in a World of Difference
Industrial symbiosis construed as networks of organizations cooperatively sharing
“wastes” has created irresistible imagery and high hopes for a time when virtually
all water, energy, and materials will be used more than once, and not to do will have
become societally unacceptable. On the one hand, industrial symbiosis research and
practice have blossomed in the last 25 years and have established a signifi cant and
meaningful subfi eld of industrial ecology and a record of achievement both in policy and in the built environment. On the other hand, there is much more work ahead
to prove the appropriateness and effectiveness of industrial symbiosis. The quest is
to understand the level at which material, energy, and water reuse, spurred by the
cooperative behavior inherent in industrial symbiosis, causes real reductions in total
primary resource consumption, actual revenue-generating opportunities for businesses, net positive environmental externalities for communities, and enhanced
people-to-people collaboration.
We see that industrial symbiosis has become and is becoming more and more
diverse as it expands to additional regions of the world. There is, for example, a
growing foothold in Turkey and Colombia and exploration in southern Africa, with
facilitated or planned projects springing up, not necessarily in the traditional
Kalundborg mold. This diversity is also refl ected in the wide range of terminology
(as illustrated by the use of eight keywords for the bibliometric search). Indeed, one
of the most vexing puzzles of the last several years has been the diffi culty of comparing across projects: how can we compare a huge, 5,000-company “Economic
and Technology Development Zone” in China with Kalundborg or small-scale agriculturally based systems (Alfaro and Miller 2014 ; Klee 1999 ) or a biomass, biofuel,
or biogas region developed in Norrköping and Linköping, Sweden (Martin and
Eklund 2011 )?
A new proposal by an international team the authors are working with has been
trying to identify convergence based on the acknowledgement that there are many
paths to industrial symbiosis. These researchers have sorted projects into a typology
of seven industrial symbiosis dynamics that establish the differences but emphasize,
also, that there are common building blocks even in seemingly disparate origins
(Boons et al. 2015 ). Some colleagues are calling for a stronger linkage between
industrial symbiosis and national and international efforts aimed at climate change,
resource effi ciency, and circular economy (Côté 2015, January 16, Personal
Communication; Mangan 2015, January 19, Personal communication).
The industrial symbiosis community has a unique property with roots in practice
aided by intellectual development, which is all the richer for the ability to bring this
knowledge back to practice. In 1997, Volume 1 Number 1 of the Journal of Industrial
Ecology had one of the early articles about industrial symbiosis coauthored by
MIT’s John Ehrenfeld and the graduate student he sent to explore Kalundborg ,
Nicholas Gertler. They recognized the opportunity that industrial symbiosis represents once the spirit of collaboration could be opened and embedded. They stated
the goal we are still seeking that together with new institutional approaches, “more
5 Scholarship and Practice in Industrial Symbiosis: 1989–2014
5 Conclusion: Industrial Symbiosis in a World of Difference
Industrial symbiosis construed as networks of organizations cooperatively sharing
“wastes” has created irresistible imagery and high hopes for a time when virtually
all water, energy, and materials will be used more than once, and not to do will have
become societally unacceptable. On the one hand, industrial symbiosis research and
practice have blossomed in the last 25 years and have established a signifi cant and
meaningful subfi eld of industrial ecology and a record of achievement both in policy and in the built environment. On the other hand, there is much more work ahead
to prove the appropriateness and effectiveness of industrial symbiosis. The quest is
to understand the level at which material, energy, and water reuse, spurred by the
cooperative behavior inherent in industrial symbiosis, causes real reductions in total
primary resource consumption, actual revenue-generating opportunities for businesses, net positive environmental externalities for communities, and enhanced
people-to-people collaboration.
We see that industrial symbiosis has become and is becoming more and more
diverse as it expands to additional regions of the world. There is, for example, a
growing foothold in Turkey and Colombia and exploration in southern Africa, with
facilitated or planned projects springing up, not necessarily in the traditional
Kalundborg mold. This diversity is also refl ected in the wide range of terminology
(as illustrated by the use of eight keywords for the bibliometric search). Indeed, one
of the most vexing puzzles of the last several years has been the diffi culty of comparing across projects: how can we compare a huge, 5,000-company “Economic
and Technology Development Zone” in China with Kalundborg or small-scale agriculturally based systems (Alfaro and Miller 2014 ; Klee 1999 ) or a biomass, biofuel,
or biogas region developed in Norrköping and Linköping, Sweden (Martin and
Eklund 2011 )?
A new proposal by an international team the authors are working with has been
trying to identify convergence based on the acknowledgement that there are many
paths to industrial symbiosis. These researchers have sorted projects into a typology
of seven industrial symbiosis dynamics that establish the differences but emphasize,
also, that there are common building blocks even in seemingly disparate origins
(Boons et al. 2015 ). Some colleagues are calling for a stronger linkage between
industrial symbiosis and national and international efforts aimed at climate change,
resource effi ciency, and circular economy (Côté 2015, January 16, Personal
Communication; Mangan 2015, January 19, Personal communication).
The industrial symbiosis community has a unique property with roots in practice
aided by intellectual development, which is all the richer for the ability to bring this
knowledge back to practice. In 1997, Volume 1 Number 1 of the Journal of Industrial
Ecology had one of the early articles about industrial symbiosis coauthored by
MIT’s John Ehrenfeld and the graduate student he sent to explore Kalundborg ,
Nicholas Gertler. They recognized the opportunity that industrial symbiosis represents once the spirit of collaboration could be opened and embedded. They stated
the goal we are still seeking that together with new institutional approaches, “more
5 Scholarship and Practice in Industrial Symbiosis: 1989–2014